It is a victory for the organizations of lawyers, magistrates and the defense of human rights which denounced the decrees taken ” in catimini “ by the Paris police headquarters against nighttime gatherings in the capital. The interim judge of the Paris administrative court suspended, on Saturday April 1, the decree of the prefect of police dated March 31, 2023 prohibiting gatherings and demonstrators in several sectors of the capital, from Saturday 5 p.m. to Sunday 3 a.m. – the last of a long list.
The judge considered that this decree “obviously unlawfully interferes with the freedom to demonstrate” with prohibition measures that do not seem “neither necessary nor proportionate to the preservation of public order”. It therefore accepted the request for interim measures made by the Syndicat des avocats de France (SAF), the League for Human Rights (LDH) and the Syndicat de la magistrature (SM).
These organizations accused the police headquarters of having taken ” in catimini “, “without anyone knowing about it”daily orders prohibiting gatherings in much of the center of the capital. “Why not publicize and make the decrees clearly legible if the goal is that people do not demonstrate? », wondered the SAF. The police headquarters had explained that it complied with article L221-2 of the code of relations between the public and the administration which provides that “the entry into force of a regulatory act is subject to the completion of mandatory publicity formalities, in particular by means of publication or display, unless otherwise provided”.
In a deliberation published on its site, the Council of the Order of the Paris Bar had also denounced the verbalizations linked to these decrees. He was particularly concerned about “conditions for exercising law enforcement” in the context of mobilization, in particular the use “excessive and unjustified violence by the security forces against citizens, sometimes minors” a you “disproportionate number of arrests”.