A new demonstration is announced on March 25 in Sainte-Soline by opponents of “basins”, water reserves intended for agricultural irrigation and disputed.
Five months after a demonstration against the “basins” in Deux-Sèvres enamelled with violence, the justice instituted proceedings, Friday March 17, against the spokesperson of a collective of opponents by prohibiting him from participating in the next rally expected in a week. According to the Niort prosecutor’s office, Julien Le Guet was taken into police custody on Friday morning by the gendarmes “as part of the investigations opened following the movement of October 29 and 30, 2022”. At the end, he was brought before a magistrate who summoned him to court on September 8.
>> In the Deux-Sèvres, in the face of drought, storing water in “mega-basins” does not flow from a source
Between now and the trial, the judge of freedoms and detention has taken a measure of judicial control which prohibits Julien Le Guet from going to the municipalities of Sainte-Soline and Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon, where a new demonstration is announced on March 25 by opponents of “basins”, water reserves intended for agricultural irrigation and contested. This demonstration was also banned on Friday by the Deux-Sèvres prefecture. The previous one, at the end of October, brought together several thousand people and gave rise to clashes with the police, as well as the degradation of an irrigation installation.
Julien Le Guet denounces “intimidation” of the authorities
Justice mainly accuses the spokesperson of the collective “Bassines non merci”, organizer of these gatherings with an agricultural union, the Peasant Confederation, and the environmental movement of the Uprisings of the Earth, of the facts of “participation in a group formed with a view to the preparation of violence against persons or destruction or damage to property”. Five people were arrested for similar facts during the October 29 demonstration in Sainte-Soline. On November 28, the Niort criminal court sentenced them to suspended sentences ranging from two to three months in prison.
When he left the court, Julien Le Guet estimated that “the prefecture, in agreement and in collusion with the prosecutor, set up operations aimed at” To “to intimidate very clearly” the protesters. “Me, I take that as a broad encouragement for us to be tens of thousands on March 24, 25, 26”he launched to the applause of a hundred people.
“It is not intimidation, it is a response to the offenses with which he is accused and to the threats he has made”Niort prosecutor Julien Wattebled told AFP. “Call to come with tools to commit damage is an offense”underlined the magistrate, specifying that “investigations” about Julien Le Guet “continued and reached the end”.