A charge of the police, a trap, arrests, a treasure hunt in a police van, a day of crowding together in a cell: this is the fate experienced, between Thursday 16 and on Friday March 17, a heterogeneous team made up, among others, of several normaliens, a jogger, a few passers-by, an engineer and two Austrian students on a tourist trip – among other people arrested on the sidelines of the incidents of the Place de la Concorde, in Paris, a few hours after the announcement by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, of the use of article 49.3 for the adoption of the pension reform.
Several of these witnesses, questioned by The worldtold the story of their setbacks, between disarray, anger, « sentiment d’injustice » and irony, after spending almost twenty-four hours in police custody – and, for almost all of them, without any charges being brought against them.
Charlène (her first name has been changed at her request), 24, a master’s student in sociology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, had decided that day to protest against the government’s decision but, as soon as the first incidents place de la Concorde in the early evening, she decides to leave the place with her boyfriend so as not to get involved “at the grand general bazaar”. Behind them, a load of CRS pushes them; in front of them, other police officers face them. They will meet “nasses”with nearly a hundred other people, in a street near the square.
“It’s trawling”
forced to sit down, they do not undergo “no insults or particularly hostile attitude” police but wait a long time before learning that they are arrested. They are then embarked in small groups in vans, direction the police station of 15e district where, for lack of space, they are “dispatched” in other police hotels. For Charlène, it will be the 7e district, where she spent the night before being questioned by a judicial police officer (OPJ) who warned her: “It might be long. » She will remain in police custody for almost a day and then will be released, without charge, on the evening of Friday March 17. Luckier, her boyfriend, transferred to the police station of 13e district, was released the same day at noon.
“It’s trawling, analyse Me Aïnoha Pascual, member of an informal group of lawyers who have been assisting the demonstrators since the first clashes at Place de la Concorde. At first there were a lot of classifications without follow-up but it is more and more deferring, we see a real desire to dissuade people from going to demonstrations. » According to the lawyer, in addition to the recurrence of accounts of tackles on the ground or brushes during arrests, police custody is systematically accompanied by a real misuse of rights: when the demonstrators refuse to take their genetic fingerprints, they automatically find themselves subject to an offence, even though the initial offense they may be charged with no longer holds.
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