2023-10-05 08:12:34
“Do you recognize the institution that is French justice? The judge that I am is obliged to ask you the question”, questions one of the two assessors during the personality interrogation of Camille B., one of the seven defendants and the only woman to appear on the second day of the trial for ultra-left terrorism before the 16th chamber of the judicial court of Paris, Wednesday October 4. The room holds its breath. Asked to explain her refusal of any psychological and psychiatric expertise, the young 33-year-old woman with a frail figure responds in a deep voice: “There are questions that arise regarding institutions, justice like others. »
Someone applauds in the room. The president asks the police to evacuate the troublemaker. Camille B. implores: “No expulsion during my testimony! » Part of the room, filled with far-left sympathizers, gets up and leaves. One of the leavers applauds again in the airlock. The president has the incident recorded by the clerk and then resumes the thread of a tense hearing.
Also read the story: Article reserved for our subscribers “Case of December 8, 2020”: a trial for ultra-left terrorism on fragile foundations
When the hearing reopened early in the afternoon, lawyer Raphaël Kempf declared: “My feeling, at the end of the first day of hearing, is that this trial is not going to go well. » Indeed, it is in a tense atmosphere that this trial has been held since Tuesday, the first for ultra-left terrorism since Action Directe in 1995 – the Tarnac case was judged after a decade of proceedings in 2018 without terrorist qualification. The first day, a rally was organized by the defendants’ support committees in front of the courthouse with a banner proclaiming “Let’s not let ourselves be anti-terrorist”.
Legality of administrative wiretapping
The small crowd who came to support the seven defendants in what is commonly called the “December 8, 2020” case, the date of their arrest, found it difficult to respect the silence that is expected in a courtroom. Among these seven defendants, six revolved around Florian D., an anarchist activist who left to fight in Syrian Kurdistan against the Islamic State (IS) organization from April 2017 to January 2018, placed under administrative surveillance and then suspected of wanting to set up “a violent group”. Many supporters came with their faces covered by a mask, Covid not seeming to be their primary motivation. Some even try to cough when the defendants called to the stand give their addresses. The president has very little taste for this old mania of the far left for clandestinity and threatens to evacuate the next “coughers”.
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