2023-07-12 01:27:20
“Humiliating and degrading” searches. This is how Camille B.’s lawyer describes the twenty strip searches suffered by her client during her stay in a women’s remand center, from December 2020 to April 2021. Only two were recognized as having caused ” non-pecuniary damage” towards the applicant by the court. Under judicial control, Camille B. announced that she wanted to appeal this decision, her lawyer Me Chloé Chalot said on Tuesday.
Excavations not justified by revenge?
According to Me Chalot, the young woman had filed a request in September 2021 against the State for these “necessarily disproportionate” searches. For the administrative judge, these searches “were not justified by the behavior of the applicant, her actions or contacts with fellow prisoners or third parties”. Delivered on July 4, the judgment specifies that “her behavior in detention did not suggest that she could have prohibited products or objects on her person at the time of the search of her cell”.
For the lawyer, these searches were motivated by “the incrimination of criminal association of a terrorist nature”, a charge for which her client will be tried soon. Last January, investigating judges sent the applicant and six men in their thirties to the criminal court. They are accused of their participation in a group “intended to commit violent actions with a view to destabilizing institutions through intimidation or terror”, according to the prosecution, which has requested a trial. All will appear in October but Camille B. disputes these accusations.
“Strip searches” considered “sources of tension” by the International Observatory of Prisons
In 2019, the association Observatoire international des prisons (OIP) denounced, in a report on the violence committed on detainees, strip searches as “particularly intrusive and ostentatious to privacy and therefore sources of tension”. In France, “full” or “body” searches have been regulated by law since November 2009. Article 57 provides that they must “be justified by the presumption of an offence” or by “the risks that the behavior of detainees involves the safety of persons and the maintenance of good order in the establishment”.
The State had already been ordered to pay compensation of 1,500 euros to a minor detainee imprisoned in a penal establishment in Porcheville (78) for “unjustified” strip searches.
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