The comptroller general of places of deprivation of liberty Dominique Simonnot denounces “serious violations of fundamental rights” by the police during police custody of people arrested in Paris in demonstrations against pension reform.
In a letter dated April 17 addressed to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and of which AFP has read, Ms. Simonnot ridicules a “massive recourse” by the police to “preventive” arrests and custody. .
“Some agents”, she writes, “had had instructions and hierarchical orders to arrest without distinction any person in one sector or another of the capital”.
In his response dated May 2, consulted by AFP, Gérald Darmanin argues that the controller “exceeds her powers, especially when she denounces the instrumentalization of police custody measures for repressive purposes”.
From the start of the challenge to the pension reform, associations, political parties, magistrates and lawyers denounced “preventive arrests” ahead of the demonstrations. On March 21, Defender of Rights Claire Hédon was also alarmed by these arrests.
On several occasions, the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez has taken issue with these accusations: “Preventive arrests do not exist”.
In view of the “very many arrests”, Ms. Simonnot explains that she “urgently ordered visits to certain police custody premises in Paris”.
Checks carried out on March 24 and 25 in nine Parisian police stations revealed “serious violations of the fundamental rights of people locked up”, according to Ms. Simonnot.
On the one hand “because of the material conditions of care in certain premises”, she reveals, on the other hand because “of the large number of procedures carried out in disregard of the standards and principles which govern the custody procedure on sight, or even, in certain situations, in violation of the applicable texts”.
She thus denounces “irregularities in the documents relating to the arrest and the indigence of the elements making it possible to characterize the offense or the attempted offense in question”. “These shortcomings affecting the procedural documents are particularly alarming,” she adds.
“80% of the procedures are closed without further action once the control of the judicial authority has been carried out, the minority of those referred (…) leave the court free”, notes the controller.
The minister disputes Ms. Simonnot’s reasoning, arguing that the search for evidence to establish individual responsibility during “collective scenes of violence” is “often hampered by the respondents who are experienced in investigative techniques”.
For him, the fact that the judicial authority then considers the offenses “as insufficiently characterized” does not mean “in no way an absence of initial offense”.
Ms. Simonnot considers that the “instructions given by the police headquarters and the Paris prosecutor’s office in particular (…) reveal a massive recourse, as a preventive measure, to the deprivation of liberty for the purpose of maintaining public order”.
For the comptroller general, “this approach to the maintenance of order not only reveals an instrumentalization of police custody measures for repressive purposes but also a diversion of the role of the judicial authority whose role (…) does not is not to guarantee the legal certainty of police measures, a fortiori when they are knowingly taken in disregard of the law”.
“It’s totally false”, reacted the prefect of police of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, questioned on Cnews. “I am not passing any instructions to carry out preventive arrests”.
“I feel insulted, offended, when I hear that,” he added, assuring that the only instruction he gave to his staff was to “stop violations”.
05/03/2023 12:04:31 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
