Arrested in 2020 and tried in the first instance in 2023, the defendants in the December 8th case appeared in court for their appeal trial in Paris this May. This provides an opportunity to revisit this judicial fiasco, a textbook example of an increasingly harsh and arbitrary repressive policy.
Since the end of May, the defendants in the December 8th case and their supporters have once again been waiting. Their appeal trial ended on May 22nd, and the verdict will be delivered in September. Will they be acquitted this time? As a reminder, they were convicted in the first instance of "terrorist conspiracy" and sentenced to terms ranging from two years' suspended imprisonment to five years' imprisonment, including probation. This is the first time since the 1980s that such a conviction has been handed down to far-left activists.At issue is an alleged group formed around Florian, who calls himself Libre Flot (Free Wave). Upon his return from Rojava, where he fought with Kurdish forces against ISIS, the activist was placed under surveillance. This marked the beginning of a police investigation that would relentlessly pursue Florian's dangerousness and fabricate a terrorist cell around him. This narrative is based on extrapolations and decontextualized facts: some are accused of illegally possessing hunting weapons, or of having made an explosive to pass the time during lockdown (one of the accused is a professional bomb maker). Added to this were drunken and heated conversations, the use of encryption tools (Signal, etc.), a few airsoft games, and some rather overly political reading... None of them knew each other beforehand, or only very casually in some cases.
The police investigation failed to uncover any plan for an attack. But for the offense of terrorist conspiracy, there is no need for a concrete plan or a perfectly organized group. This is precisely the problem with this criminal classification, whose legal framework is becoming increasingly blurred by case law... and can therefore be applied to almost any female political activist.
With dramatic repressive consequences. As soon as one moves beyond ordinary law and into the realm of "terrorism," ordinary laws cease to apply. Those charged in the December 8th trial endured lengthy and traumatic periods of police custody at the DGSI headquarters, pretrial detention, including solitary confinement-a practice considered "white torture"-systematic strip searches after every visit, and subsequent restraining orders prohibiting contact with others. They were also registered in the file of perpetrators of terrorist offenses (Fijait), which requires them to regularly report to the police station and notify the authorities of any travel abroad. In total, at least seven years of their lives were obliterated by counterterrorism efforts. So, "who is terrorizing whom," to borrow the title of the book compiling the accounts of the first trial?
Without a doubt: it is the State that is terrorizing its own people. From the counter-insurgency doctrines born in the colonies to the "war on terror," what is at stake today in the events of December 8th, as in many other cases of "terrorism," is the continuation of the war against the people.
Agrippine (UCL Nantes)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Repression-Affaire-du-8-decembre-suite-et-fin
_________________________________________
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten