2023-10-20 20:26:35
Rally of the CGT du Nord in front of the Lille police station, following the arrest for “apology of terrorism” of its departmental secretary, Jean-Paul Delescaut, on October 20, 2023. PASCAL BONNIERE / PHOTOPQR/VOIX DU NORD/MAXPPP
It was a little after six o’clock on Friday October 20 when around ten police officers, several of whom were hooded and equipped with a battering ram, rang the doorbell at the home of Jean-Paul Delescaut, departmental secretary of the CGT in the North. They intervened as part of an investigation opened by the Lille public prosecutor’s office to “apology of terrorism” et “provocation to hatred and violence”. A union employee was also arrested at her home, but without such police deployment. Their police custody, which lasted all morning, was lifted around 1:30 p.m.
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In question, a call to demonstrate in Lille, Thursday October 12, in “support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the colonial state of Israel”, broadcast two days earlier. On this leaflet, we read: “The horrors of the illegal occupation have piled up. Since Saturday [7 octobre, date de l’attaque du Hamas contre l’Etat hébreu], they receive the responses they provoked. »
It is, according to our information, this sentence which motivated the procedure opened against Mr. Delescaut. It provoked a reaction from Guy Bensoussan, the president of the Jewish community of Lille, who then announced his intention to file a complaint. Joined on Friday, the latter confirmed to Monde not having filed it yet, ensuring that “this police intervention was carried out at the request of the prefect”. “He enforces the republican order”added Mr. Bensoussan, for whom “all the Jews of France are worried and (…) have reason to be”.
“It would have been enough to summon him”
Friday morning, the announcement of the arrests of members of the CGT immediately triggered a call to demonstrate in front of the central police station in Lille. Around a hundred people, most of them trade unionists but also activists of the Palestinian cause, gathered, expressing their indignation both in substance and in form.
“Heavily armed police officers, enough to break down the door… Our secretary was arrested like a terrorist”denounced Hamid Chebout, coordinator of the northern CGT, judging that“it would have been enough to summon him.” Before adding: “We condemned the terrorist acts on the side of Israel and the Palestinians. We are clear and we assume our position: we are for a free Palestine. »
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If the unionists, the majority during this improvised demonstration, stuck to the denunciation of these arrests and pleaded for freedom of union expression, some pro-Palestinian activists refused to condemn the atrocities committed on October 7, rejecting the full responsibility for the war between Israel and Hamas on “the colonizing state which massacres the Palestinians” and accusing the government of Benjamin Netanyahu of “genocide”.
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