2023-06-23 17:46:53
All police custody in the investigation into an action “supported” by the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) collective last December against the Lafarge cement factory in Bouc-Bel-Air, near Marseille, has been lifted, a- we learned Friday from a judicial source.
A total of 17 people were taken into police custody on Monday and Tuesday and all were released without prosecution, Jean-Luc Blanchon, public prosecutor of Aix-en-Provence, told AFP. Two will be summoned later before an investigating judge, he said.
Eight police custody had already been lifted Thursday morning, following the arrests, which had notably targeted people living in the former ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Loire-Atlantique), where the collective of the uprisings of the earth ( SLT) was incorporated in January 2021.
“Degradation in an organized gang by dangerous means”
The people arrested were suspected of “degradation in a gang organized by dangerous means”, “degradation in a meeting” and “criminal association”, following an action carried out in December 2022 in Bouc-Bel-Air (Bouches-du-Rhône) against a Lafarge cement plant, a company referred to as a “big polluter”.
Among them were an EELV activist employed in the city of Marseille, whose environmental party had denounced the arrest, and a photojournalist who was doing long-term documentary work on the SLT collective. A first wave of around fifteen arrests and police custody took place in early June as part of the investigation into the action taken against this cement factory, and had already ended with releases without prosecution.
On Saturday December 10, 2022, several dozen activists dressed in white hooded overalls targeted this Lafarge group cement plant, causing significant damage. In a video of the operation, posted on several sites, members of the group were seen attacking a surveillance camera with a hammer or a pipe with hatchets and what appeared to be the start of fires in parked trucks.
After the intervention of these activists, the Uprisings of the Earth had supported the action “against the ecocidal giant of concrete” without claiming it. The government dissolved the Earth Uprisings on Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, accusing the collective of “calling” and “participating” in violence, a decision immediately challenged before the Council of State by the environmental group.
More information to follow…
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