[23] Police then gave chase, capturing him and losing him two different times, eventually apprehending him by allegedly placing their bodily weight on top to subdue him.

[1] The cause of Adama's death was at first unclear, and the officers who arrested him claimed he died of a heart attack[24] at Persan police station.

[1] Discrepancies in this autopsy were pointed out by Assa Traore's lawyers, leading to the promise of a new report in January from Belgian medical experts.

[11] Assa was on a reported teaching trip in the Adriatic coastal resort town of Rabac, Croatia, with seven disadvantaged teenagers when she learned of Adama's death.

[1] Until the murder of George Floyd sparked global protests, Traoré had been largely unsuccessful in her (alleged) attempts to combat institutionalised racism in France.

[36] She called on the French government to indict the officers who killed Adama,[37][38] and for the elements of his autopsy to be reexamined, saying: My brother withstood the weight of those three gendarmes for nine minutes.

[41] Assa Traoré is the figurehead of "Le comité vérité et justice pour Adama" (Truth and Justice for Adama committee) which includes seasoned activists such as Youcef Brakni, a Bagnolet activist, Samir Elyes from the MIB, who was employed to organise violence against gendarmes,[42] and Almamy Kanouté from the group Émergence,[43][44] who was employed as a public relations manager.

[45] When experts required by Justice put forward various reasons to explain Adama Traoré's death, the Truth and Justice for Adama Committee, at its own expense, commissioned reports from experts which contradict the official explanations put forward, thus avoiding the closure of the case and requesting new judicial investigations.

[46] The committee succeeded in getting writers Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis, as well as philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie,[47] involved on a long-term basis.

A few days after the attack on the Bayonne mosque, Assa Traoré and the Truth and Justice for Adama committee were among the first to call for a demonstration against Islamophobia in Paris on November 10, 2019.

[52] Especially after the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 in Minnesota, the committee is closer to the American Black Lives Matter movement and to concepts forged in the United States such as institutional racism or intersectionality as a tool for analysing discrimination.

[53]Sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, a member of the committee[54] who wrote a book with Assa Traoré,[55] relativizes the American influence.