Mobilizations for El Hacen Diarra, who died following police intervention in the 20th arrondissement ---- On Wednesday evening, January 14, El Hacen Diarra, a 35-year-old Mauritanian man living in the Muriers hostel in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, went out onto the opposite sidewalk to smoke a cigarette and drink a coffee. The hostel's rooms are somewhat overcrowded, and the hallways must be kept clear. Police officers from the 20th arrondissement stopped him, and he protested the pat-down he was subjected to. He died. A video shows him on the ground being brutalized by the police. The autopsy revealed a fractured thyroid cartilage and signs of strangulation.
On Sunday the 18th, a tribute was paid to him, organized by his family and the hostel's residents' committee. The crowd was large and tightly packed. The speeches ranged from denouncing police violence to calling for a democratic police force. The following Sunday, a demonstration took place from the hostel to the 20th arrondissement police station. The crowd was even larger, displaying banners from the residents' committee, undocumented immigrant collectives, and various Truth and Justice committees. There were also union activists, notably from the CGT, and members of the French Communist Party (PCF). This is relatively unusual for this type of protest.
It must be said that the 20th arrondissement police station is no stranger to violence: in 2007, Lamine Dieng suffocated in a police van; between 2019 and 2020, five women and a minor were sexually assaulted there; and in 2023, Safyatou, Salif, and Ilan, aged 17, 13, and 14, were deliberately run over by a car from the same station. It must also be said that the Muriers hostel is a well-organized one (we recently reported on the occupation of this hostel under the heading "Without Borders"), and that anti-fascist and anti-racist groups are well established in the neighborhood. A new demonstration is scheduled for February 21, with six demands: immediate justice (indictment of the police officers involved in El Hacen's death, justice for Safyatou, Salif, and Ilan, and reopening of all cases dismissed without further action); truth and transparency (independent investigation under citizen oversight with publication of all evidence and an end to the lie about "cameras being discharged"); sanctions and dissolution (immediate suspension of officers involved in the violence, and disbandment of the violent units); an end to racism and police violence (a ban on racial profiling and excessive fines, prone restraint and chokeholds, and the repeal of the "License to Kill" law); Equality of rights (equal rights for residents of hostels, the same rights as all tenants, regularization of all undocumented immigrants); reparations and support (recognition of state responsibility and financial, medical, and psychological support for victims and families, concrete commitments from all candidates in the municipal and presidential elections).
Source: A local activist
Use of Interpol
Interpol is an international organization created in 1923 whose goal is to promote international police cooperation. Its headquarters are currently in Lyon. Interpol has a total of 196 member countries, representing almost all the countries in the world. Each member state has a National Central Bureau (NCB) that liaises between its national police force and those of other countries to form the global network.
Its activities revolve around drug production and trafficking, terrorism, money laundering, organized crime, and international crime. It is thanks to Interpol that war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, responsible for the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia, and major players in the global cocaine trade, such as Rocco Morabito, a leader of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, were apprehended. These arrests were hailed and, according to Interpol, contribute to "creating a safer world." But this international police organization has already been embroiled in some major scandals. After the war, Interpol gave an internal order not to prosecute crimes linked to the Nazi regime, under the pretext that they were "political in nature," in order to protect the many police officers who had participated in Nazi crimes. For several years, the organization has facilitated the persecution of political opponents, activists, journalists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities, who are hunted down around the world. These abuses of power endanger thousands of people, and the organization is fully aware of them. She claims to have been tackling the problem for ten years. In vain.
Confidential reports, correspondence between national offices, lists of pending notices, names of issuing countries, internal memos from oversight bodies... Disclose and the British public broadcaster BBC received an unprecedented leak of internal Interpol documents, revealing an international scandal at the heart of the prestigious institution; a system that transforms a renowned police force into a formidable weapon of political oppression. The flaws are staggering. They begin with the fraudulent use of "red notices," those infamous police notices that allow a state to send an arrest warrant to all member countries of the organization. Every year, thousands of red notices are issued without the targeted individuals being informed. Many discover them at the airport or during a police check, which can lead to their arrest, then their imprisonment, and finally their extradition to the country that issued the red notice there are currently 86,000 in circulation. These tens of thousands of wanted notices are supposed to undergo two rounds of review: before they are published, and again afterward by the Commission for the Control of Files (CCF) if the individuals concerned file a complaint. The purpose of these safeguards is to ensure that the request for police assistance complies with the organization's statutes, including Article 3, which specifies that "any activity or intervention in matters or affairs of a political, military, religious, or racial nature is strictly prohibited." In other words, if the institution's political neutrality is violated, officers must cancel the notice. The CCF itself admits that the number of appeals has increased fivefold in the last ten years. In 2024 alone, at least 322 people who believed their inclusion in the files was unjustified had their records removed by the control commission. A figure that excludes all those who cannot afford a lawyer to contest their surveillance, and also excludes all those who are unaware of their red notice.
Source: disclose.ngo
Security Overreach in Parliament
As elections approach, and as expected, the number of security bills being debated in Parliament (Senate + National Assembly) is exploding! La Quadrature du Net has taken stock of the current issues:
The extension of authorization for Algorithmic Video Surveillance (AVS) until 2027 continues to move forward. The 2030 Olympics will serve as a pretext to extend this trial period, much to the satisfaction of industry, even though the very benefit of this technology has a negative track record. But the text circulating in Parliament also seeks to create a new system prohibiting people from appearing at venues hosting major events. The Ministry of the Interior considers the MICAS (Individual Administrative Control and Surveillance Measures) to be too restrictive for law enforcement, even though it issued over 300 of these measures during the 2024 Olympics. It therefore wants to create a new, simpler system in its place: "appearance bans" would allow the prefect to prevent someone from entering a location without judicial intervention or the need for a prior criminal conviction. These bans were introduced into law by the Narcotrafficking Act and have already been used 1,682 times since June 2025. The 2030 Olympics Act aims to extend them to "any person for whom there are serious reasons to believe that their behavior constitutes a particularly serious threat to public safety." It's hard to be any broader and more vague! This algorithmic video surveillance is becoming widespread. Members of Parliament voted on Monday, February 16, in its first reading, to pilot the use of automated security systems (VSA) to combat theft in stores and shopping centers. The legislation proposes implementing technologies that analyze live video feeds from surveillance cameras to detect any suspicious activity that might suggest a theft is in progress. This software can send an alert directly to the store manager's phone, allowing them to verify the alert and take appropriate action. We will return to this topic later, as the proposed solution is currently considered non-compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority).
Extend the powers of municipal police and rural constables to include identity checks and the issuance of fixed-penalty fines (see previous CA under this heading). Facilitate the use of automated license plate recognition (ALPR) software.
Banning Social Media for Under 15s
Source: Laquadrature.net
Legal Handling of Police Violence
The author of this column has decided to compile a few "cases" from the month where trials follow one another and are remarkably similar.
Trial of gratuitous violence against "yellow vest" protesters trapped in a Burger King on December 1, 2018: Nine riot police officers from Company 43 in Chalon-sur-Saône were finally identified as being among those who inflicted the violence, causing lasting injuries to the tear-gassed Yellow Vests who had sought refuge in the Burger King. These nine officers went on trial for three days in early February in Paris. The prosecutor delivered a firm indictment, requesting suspended sentences of six to twenty months, while defining their scope: "This trial is not a sweeping generalization, it is not a trial of the police with a capital P, it is a trial of individual acts committed by nine men." Phew! The institution is safe, even though the entire company stood in solidarity with these so-called rogue officers, protected by their leader who was merely called as a witness.
On February 11, the Court of Cassation upheld the dismissal of charges against the three gendarmes accused of having restrained Adama Traoré prone for several minutes and of failing to provide assistance to the young man who had collapsed in their vehicle and was left handcuffed until the firefighters arrived. It's worth recalling that the Adama Traoré case brought the issue of police violence in France to the forefront thanks to the "Truth and Justice for Adama" committee, led by his sister Assa. Following this, the family's lawyer filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights "to have France condemned." To be continued!
A police officer was given an eight-month suspended sentence for firing an LBD (less-lethal defense weapon) during a Parisian demonstration against the proposed pension reforms on January 9, 2020. The Paris Judicial Court found the officer guilty of "intentional violence with a weapon by a person in a position of public authority." The presiding judge nevertheless sought to justify this relatively lenient sentence, as the law provides for up to five years' imprisonment for such offenses. "The reports concerning Mr.[name omitted]were entirely laudatory," the magistrate noted, citing his good performance evaluations and lack of a criminal record. The court also decided not to impose the additional penalty of a ban on carrying a firearm, nor to record the sentence on the officer's criminal record, in order "not to hinder the continuation of his career." No further comment.
Sources: lemonde.fr and mediapart.fr
Viry-Châtillon case: the courts will exonerate the police officers who framed innocent people!
The police officers in charge of the investigation into the attack on their colleagues, who were severely burned in October 2016 in Viry-Châtillon, wrote false police reports, distorting the statements of several defendants as well as a key witness. This crime is punishable by fifteen years in prison. Under intense pressure, these officers were determined to deliver guilty parties: their falsifications played a significant role in the conviction of some young men, whose innocence was later recognized after years in prison. This is the case of F, 24, and D, 26, who spent four years and eighteen months in detention, respectively, before being definitively exonerated by the Paris juvenile court of appeals in April 2021. These methods could have remained secret. But since 2007, police custody has been filmed for criminal offenses. Having contested the official reports drawn up from these reports that is, the written transcripts of what was said during custody several lawyers were able to obtain access to the videos during the appeal trial, thereby discovering the police officers' practices and their cover-ups. Targeted by a judicial investigation opened for forgery of public documents, intentional violence, and fraud in court proceedings, with the aggravating circumstance that these offenses were committed by persons holding public authority, ten police officers were questioned as simple witnesses. Four others, the most implicated, were placed under the status of assisted witness following their interrogations. However, in October 2025, the magistrates announced the end of the investigation, giving the lawyers three months to submit their observations. Since none of the police officers have been formally charged during this investigation, barring any new developments in the case, the officers involved will not be tried.
Source: Mediapart.fr
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4673
_________________________________________
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten