Three police officers have gone on trial north of Paris accused of assaulting a 22-year-old footballer in 2017, in one of the most significant cases of alleged police violence against a black man in France in the past decade. Théodore Luhaka, who had been talking to friends on his housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois at the end of the afternoon of February 2017, was stopped as part of a police identity check. He was teargassed, beaten on the face and body, and left with permanent disabilities and incontinence after an extendable police baton perforated his anus. The case shocked France and led to several nights of unrest and protests on housing estates. Stars such as the actor Omar Sy came out in support of Luhaka, who was visited in hospital by the then Socialist president, François Hollande. At the time, Luhaka was a young sports mentor with no criminal record and about to begin a career as a professional footballer in Belgium. He was part of a group of young people talking near a cultural centre on a housing estate who were stopped by police asking to see their identity papers. CCTV footage showed Luhaka was forced to the ground and hit. The beating lasted eight minutes. Bleeding, he was then taken by the officers to the police station by car. During the journey he said he was racially abused. When he arrived at the police station, another officer called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital and underwent surgery. Luhaka was treated for serious injuries to his anus, which were initially investigated as rape. The three officers, who are still working for the police in desk jobs, appeared in the criminal court of Seine-Saint-Denis at Bobigny on Tuesday at the start of a two-week trial. Two are accused of aggravated voluntary violence. A third faces charges of voluntary violence leading to permanent injury. He had initially been charged with raping Luhaka, but that charge was later changed to voluntary violence. Luhaka had to give up his footballing career. He moved to a different neighbourhood, lives with his mother and goes out little. He told Le Parisien: “I died that day.” He and his family have said they want justice and did not want the trial to be seen as “anti-police” or to stoke tensions in the banlieue (suburbs) north of Paris where he grew up, and where they said it was important to maintain calm. Luhaka said another officer had come to his aid at the police station and called an ambulance, staying with him until he went into surgery that night. Lawyers for the three officers have said they denied voluntary violence and felt their actions were justified. The officer accused of permanently injuring Luhaka’s anus said he had been aiming for his legs. Luhaka’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, told Franceinfo that the crucial message from the trial would be whether the officers were allowed to remain in the police. He said the fact they were still allowed to work in the force “seems deeply shocking to us”. Vey said: “To be clear, Théo lives as a victim of rape, with the same psychological damage, as well as permanent physical damage … The act inflicted on him is perhaps not a rape in the judicial sense but it is in the psychological sense … It’s an injury that affected his intimacy and his virility. His ability to go to the toilet has been affected. And added to that, he has been harassed on social networks in very racist and humiliating terms. It has been hard for him to recover. He still has not got over it. His environment and future were devastated in a matter of minutes.”