Twenty lawyers have filed these complaints against X on behalf of their clients, protesters who have been taken into custody since the government resorted to 49.3 on March 16.
They denounce arrests and detentions “arbitrary, aimed at deterring [les manifestants] to exercise their right to demonstrate and to break the social movement” against pension reform. A group of twenty lawyers filed a hundred complaints for “arbitrary attack on freedom by a person holding public authority” and “obstructing the freedom to demonstrate”, Friday March 31, with the prosecution of the Paris judicial court, learned franceinfo. They represent demonstrators placed in police custody since the use of 49.3 by the government to pass the text of the law. As one of the lawyers, Coline Bouillon, told franceinfo, the criminal lawyers expect to receive other complaints in the days to come.
According to figures from the Paris prosecutor’s office communicated to franceinfo, 952 people were placed in police custody between March 15 and 28, the date of the last day of mobilization. Only 43 people were immediately brought before the court. The majority were released without prosecution, with no follow-up. Others were presented to a prosecutor’s delegate for a “classification without further action under conditions”. In a press release and during a press conference on Friday afternoon, the lawyers denounced this procedure, which deprives “the defendant of a public hearing” and which can lead in particular to a ban on demonstrating or going to Paris for a period of six months.
“I was very afraid”
“I was arrested with several people following a trap, we were about twenty young people, we received a lot of blows”testified a young woman of 25 years, arrested on March 18, place d’Italie in Paris. “I did twenty-one hours in police custody. I was very afraid for my future, that there was something on my locker”she added, before specifying that she was finally released without prosecution on Sunday afternoon.
At his side, an 18-year-old art history student said he was arrested on Monday March 20 as he walked in “a perpendicular street” at the gathering. “A crowd movement came over me, I fell and was on the ground when I was arrested”he described. “Once in police custody, I had to wait five and a half hours before seeing a doctor. I was very scared.” He too came out on Sunday afternoon with a ranking without follow-up.
A 22-year-old film student also reported violence during her arrest on Thursday evening March 23. “I was with my girlfriend, we were walking down the street, a policewoman pulled me by the hair, she hit my cheekbone against the wall, my girlfriend was touched during the searchshe said. We had serflexes attached to our wrists when we weren’t struggling, we had marks for several days.”
“We spent twenty-one hours in police custody. In the cell, a young woman had an open wound in her skull from a truncheon, there was feces on the wall. The police were obnoxious, we were refused to call a relative.”
A complainantat the press conference
According to one of the lawyers, Aïnoha Pascual, several complaints of police violence will be filed in the coming days, “a third” complainants declaring to have suffered.
The criminal lawyers and their clients also criticize the reasons for the arrests during the demonstrations. Most demonstrators are arrested for “gathering after warnings” or “participation in a group for the preparation of violence and destruction”, an offense punishable by one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros. “They arrest people before they have done anything, this is called a preventive arrest”lambasted one of the collective’s lawyers, Raphaël Kempf, during the press conference. “These are ‘sanctions’ police custody, to dissuade people from returning to demonstrate”supported her colleague Coline Bouillon.
“Such a large number of arrests had not been seen since the ‘yellow vests’.”
Coline Bouillon, lawyerat franceinfo
The lawyer also denounced “an operation to file protesters” with “collection of fingerprints and DNA”. Those who refused were sometimes prosecuted for this reason alone, said his colleague Alexis Baudelin. “One of my clients, threatened with provisional detention by the prosecutor at the time of the referral, broke down and ended up giving them away. She then obtained a release”he illustrated.
Seventeen judicial investigations entrusted to the IGPN
In their complaints filed against X, a copy of which franceinfo was able to consult, the plaintiffs and their lawyers point out that the fact of being placed in police custody for up to forty-eight hours without being prosecuted thereafter cannot make the subject to compensation for “unjustified deprivation of liberty within a police station”. French law does not provide for this. As a result, “the only way to obtain redress is to file this complaint”they write.
With regard to the offense of “obstructing the freedom to demonstrate”, it must “be able to be applied when the police and their hierarchy (…) make illegitimate use of their power”can we read in the complaint. “This organized behavior (…) had the effect of creating amazement and fright among the demonstrators who found themselves deprived of the possibility of fully exercising their freedom”continues the text.
The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) has been seized of 17 judicial inquiries since the first national day of mobilization, January 19. Among these, one targets police officers from the Brav-M, a decried motorized brigade, recorded making threatening and humiliating remarks towards young demonstrators arrested in the capital.