It is an arrest that does not fail to make people talk across the border. As indicated by L’Est Réublicain, Ernest Moret, a French publisher invited to the literary fair in London, was arrested by the British police on Monday April 17 when he got off the Eurostar. The reasons for his arrest, under the 2000 anti-terrorism law, may be linked to protests against pension reform in France and his close ties to the radical left.
Under “Paragraph 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act” the British authorities are able to detain any traveller, even without the slightest evidence to do so, and without their needing to justify it. This is precisely what happened in the case of Ernest Moret. Still without reason, they then demanded access to his computer and telephone. What the editor refused, causing his arrest. “British anti-terrorism is unique in Europe in terms of emergency legislation”, deplores La Fabrique, one of the publishers of the French.
During his interrogation, the investigators mentioned to Ernest Moret “a demonstration” to which the editor would have gone, or planned to go soon, in France. His entourage points to the strange questions that are put to him: “Do you support the French president? Have you demonstrated against the pension reform? What are your thoughts on handling the Covid crisis? “. According to La Fabrique, which denounces a “logic of political censorship and repression of protest currents of thought”, this arrest could have been directly requested by the French authorities.
Ernest Moret was released Tuesday evening, after 24 hours in police custody, without prosecution at this stage, but pending further investigations. His computer and laptop were kept by the British authorities and Ernest Moret faces three months in prison if he persists in his refusal to provide his access codes.
In a statement relayed on Twitter, La Fabrique “demands the cessation of all proceedings and prosecutions against its manager […]” and considers this event as “an additional element of the authoritarian escalation of the French government in the face of popular discontent and mass mobilizations”. At this stage, neither London police nor the French Home Office have commented.
pic.twitter.com/gyr0u1rhmq
Thirty publishers have signed a column to denounce what “suggests a worrying collaboration between the British and French authorities, and constitutes in fact an attack by the French State against a publishing house whose catalog and editorial policy are notoriously enshrined in critical thinking and in opposition to government policies”.