On March 8, 2021, agent 1273SI drew up a minute of “open source research” at the DGSI offices in Levallois-Perret. The search concerns a number found in the telephone of a person arrested 2 months after December 8, 2020, then released without further action after two days in police custody. The number is from LegalTeam Paris.
The agent then turns to an article on legal advice for high school students wishing to blockade their schools as part of a social movement, which lists the lawyers of the Paris LT. The agent notes by “correlation” that some of these lawyers have been chosen by certain defendants.
He also noted that a person who had also been arrested, placed under police custody but released without further action, had used this number on 4 occasions.
The agent searches other LegalTeams to see if other lawyers are members. He found the name of one of them in a Rouen LT document entitled “Arrests – police custody 6 essential points”
It is absolutely incomprehensible what this intelligence report is doing in this file, as it has nothing to do with the facts of the case. Me BOUILLON pointed out to the Court that no research had been carried out on Airsoft, even though this is a point on which suspicions rest, but that the DGSI and PNAT had thought it relevant to add this information on the choice of lawyers.
How can we fail to see in this a desire to criminalize the militant activity of these lawyers, in order to undermine their defense and extend to them the spectrum of presumption of guilt beyond those under investigation, as has been done for their relatives?
PNAT will come back to this in its indictment of what it calls “concerted opposition to the manifestation of the truth”. Clearly, these radicalized magistrates find it unbearable that people should be able to express themselves freely, especially when they contradict the DGSI’s proven fantasies.
During the hearings, the PNAT will ask the defendants several times: “Are you in the habit of informing your lawyers before committing an offence?” As the evidence fades as the trial progresses, the PNAT now points to the suspicion of a lie to support the DGSI’s initial scenario.
It’s hard not to see in PNAT’s game the slow slide towards legitimizing forms of white torture.
In fact, while the statements obtained under police surveillance in the DGSI’s gaols are contested by the defendants: with evidence of forgery by the agents, but also of intense psychological pressure, nauseating “off” statements, perverse lies, threats (15 years in prison), personality analyses (based on several months of wiretapping), threats of sexual assault and administrations of Tramadol and Antarax; the PNAT goes to great lengths to build on these statements and instill a presumption of falsehood on the declarations made in court, in consultation with the lawyers. This is a dangerous and serious shift.
We have seen how far-right elected representatives equate anti-terrorism lawyers with the “terrorists” they defend. At Bure, we saw the public prosecutor’s office attempt to include a lawyer in the criminal association. In countries where anti-terrorism is over-developed, lawyers are always next on the list, as are journalists, artists, activists, trade unionists and so on. Turkey and Russia are frightening examples.
We denounce the dangerous extension of the presumption of guilt and the slow expansion of lawlessness planned by the PNAT. Counter-terrorism is the vanguard of dehumanization.
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The French Lawyers’ Union (syndicat des avocats de France) denounces: “Beyond the crudeness of such an innuendo, it is above all incredibly dangerous and alarming in what it reveals about the conception of the rights of the defense on the part of the Public Prosecutor, and therefore of the Minister of Justice, yet a former lawyer, and the DGSI.“
The French National Bar Council (Conseil National des Barreaux) denounces: “the very existence of such an official report, which commented on or even simply reported the details of the choice of a lawyer, and which, through the innuendo it implies, suggests that this choice would be considered as an indication of the commission of an offence; and the violation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the principle of impartiality to which it is bound under article 31 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.”
The December 8 Defence of the Accused denounces: “the way in which the police and the public prosecutor’s office feel they have wings, as soon as terrorism is involved, even if it means forgetting a few basic principles.”
The Criminal Lawyers Association (Association des Avocats Pénalistes) denounces: “all forms of pressure put on the Defense and the exercise of its rights.” [french text in link on soutien812.net]
For over three years, the DGSI has been claiming that the December 8 defendants took part in a paramilitary training camp at Parcoul-Chenaud, during the first lockdown in April/May 2020. It’s a fake.
Like many of the DGSI’s whimsical allegations in this case, this story of paramilitary training, provided by Libre Flot, is a pure fabrication. For the past two weeks, the defendants have been recounting a random cohabitation of confinement in a good-natured atmosphere, where fun and alcohol are omnipresent.
As the hearings progressed over the last few days, we discovered just a bunch of buddies (some of whom were meeting for the first time and would never see each other again) who got through the confinement as best they could between parties, games, collective workcamps and various activities. As B. summed up in court: “I spent more time trying to make vegan mayonnaise than I did playing Airsoft”.
Despite the best efforts of the PNAT – whose few incriminating elements are words extorted under drugs and threats during custody at the DGSI offices – the three afternoons spent trying to produce a large firecracker and the afternoon playing Airsoft seem ridiculous given the charges of terrorism levelled against the accused.
Libre Flot, tirelessly presented as the Top Dog of the case, obsessed with war and the desire to train his buddies in the handling of weapons, has in fact trained no one and passed on no war knowledge to his buddies. To add insult to injury, when he tried to offer a boxing workshop, called “boxe your face” (boxe ta face) by the group, he broke his little finger after 20 minutes.
All the defendants report a general sense of fun, with no hint of a military or clandestine atmosphere. Neighbors come and go, some even arriving by the river!
To back up the defendants’ statements and demonstrate the real atmosphere – and to dispel once and for all the fantasies created by the DGSI – the Defense Department played extracts from this video in the courtroom, the best possible demonstration of the truth about the “military training camp” at the heart of the terrorist association charges.
For more details, follow the hearing reports here and the chronicles here.
Join the solidarity with the 8/12 defendants! Gathering on Friday October 27 at 11am in front of the Tribunal de Paris (Porte de Clichy).
This first week of hearings will have validated one certainty: this trial is guided by the presumption of guilt, and it is the defendants’ political opinions that are being criminalized.
While Olivier Cahn denounces in the Blast! report an association between “terrorism” and “direct action“, the stakes of this trial go much further for us, because in this case: the defendants are not accused of any direct action.
This is certainly the case for the operations carried out by SDAT in recent years (Ivan Alocco, 15 Juin Limousin, Lafarge), but in the case of December 8, the repressive stakes go far beyond the repression of direct action. The main issue is not to extend the interpretation of “terrorism” in law to include damage and sabotage, but rather to create legal possibilities for repressing revolutionary political commitments (real or supposed) in the context of “pre-terrorism”.
The evolution of anti-terrorist legislation in Turkey, Italy and the USA is a perfect illustration of this strategy, which aims in the long term to bring all subversive expression within the repressive scope of anti-terrorism.
As the PNAT writes in its indictment: “the ultra-left is multiple and protean”, and its action ranges from the distribution of flyers to armed engagement, via all forms of militancy (almost all of which are legal: trade unionism, associative or autonomous).
The PNAT follows in the footsteps of the “counter-subversion” doctrines theorized by the military DGR, taught in their “schools of terrorism” and cruelly applied during the Algerian war (see Terreur et Séduction by Jérémy Rubenstein and L’Ennemi Intérieur by Mathieu Rigouste). This doctrine considers that there is a mechanism of “revolutionary decay“, starting with “low-intensity” actions and culminating in the overthrow of the state. In order to maintain order and security at the lowest possible cost, it is therefore necessary to nip protests in the bud.
This is what is at stake in the trial of the December 8 defendants. In fact, this is word for word what lies at the heart of the suspicions against the defendants: they would have liked the idea of “overthrowing the state”.
“A trial that’s not going to go well”: the defense under stress.
This trial is a key moment in the process of global fascization in its French incarnation. So it’s hardly surprising that the judges meticulously refused all the defense’s requests from day one.
According to PNAT, there is no reason to “doubt the loyalty” of DGSI agents. The judge seems to agree. Her power to summon witnesses by force will not be applied to 1207SI and 856SI, authors of over 150 procès-verbaux in the file, many of which contain “material errors“.
Nor is there any reason to postpone the hearing until the Conseil d’Etat has ruled on the legality of the administrative tapping of Libre Flot since its return from Rojava. The productivity of the judiciary takes precedence.
According to Kempf, this trial, which has “got off to a very bad start”, is also likely to end very badly. At least a day’s delay has already set in, and the most important subjects have been left to the end, at the risk of falling by the wayside: the question of the “project” and “clandestinity” (through the means of communication).
“Getting to know you better“: pathologizing the victims of police barbarity.
Following this first day of refusal to hear the defense, two days of hearings were devoted to “the personalities of the defendants“. For an average of two hours per defendant, their life stories and most intimate states of mind were scrutinized.
Each defendant’s profile, sometimes linked to a life of great hardship, more often to freedom and plans for an independent future, seems to interest the magistrates only in its “violent” and pathologizing potential.
The questions constantly come back to: addictions (drugs and alcohol), the period of confinement, the traumas linked to police violence on the ZADs.
The judges are obsessed with the resentment the defendants might feel about “hands torn off, rapes by the police” and the “death” of Rémi Fraisse, murdered by a gendarme armed with a grenade.
The subtitle is clear and nauseating: you have traumas and anti-cop hatred, which makes you fragile and dangerous given the facts of the case. Or how the horrors committed by the cops are turned around in an attempt to criminalize the companions of December 8.
An appalling example:
an assessor judge looks back on Svink’s childhood and a scooter accident for which he is still paying the price today. He’s 39, 15 at the time. He’s run over by a drunk driver, a cop who’s just off duty. Then, on his hospital bed, the cop and his colleagues pressured him not to press charges. The judge won’t ask about the outcome, but about the links with his “ACAB” tattoo and, above all, the “facts” he’s accused of today, 21 years later, namely: being passionate about special effects and having the right to handle “active” materials – but not with someone returning from Rojava, it would seem.
“In the name of the French people”: academic criticism turned into terrorist intent.
“We are not here to judge you on your political opinions“, said the President on the first day of the hearing, leaving the room more than a little doubtful. Doubts were quickly dispelled in the days that followed, when – among other things – Camille had to explain for an hour about a letter addressed to the examining magistrate in which sociologists and historians critical of the justice system were quoted.
While in custody, she had read books such as: “Sous l’œil de l’expert.Les dossiers judiciaires de personnalité” by Ludivine Bantigny and Jean-Claude Vimont; “Mauvaise graine. Deux siècles d’histoire de la justice des enfants” by Véronique Blanchard and Mathias Gardet; or the criminologist Louk Hulsman quoted in “Crimes et Peines” by Gwenola Ricordeau.
According to the assessor, the following quotes “speak volumes” about her political opinions and, by dangerous implication, about “the facts of which you are accused“:
“The confrontation between the words of the young people and those of the experts is unbelievably violent. It speaks volumes about the class prejudices, sexism and racism that prevailed at the time, leading to aberrant legal decisions with far-reaching consequences for young people who were certainly under surveillance, but neither listened to nor heard.”
“In their conviction that they can scientifically measure the personality of individuals, doctors, psychologists, educators and magistrates end up confining them, at the heart of their cases, in categories that are often fixed and that in turn determine the fate of the person being judged”.
“the notion of illegalism exposes the false neutrality of legal categories that represent ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ as stable and universal historical facts, as objective facts devoid of any value judgment”.
Known for being “the girlfriend of a policeman from the Bobigny criminal brigade” (according to the Blast! article), the judge displayed a flagrant denial of conflict of interest. She quickly abandoned questions of personality and plunged into an aggressive confrontation: “As a judge, I have a duty to ask you the question“, she asserted, before stupefying the room by exclaiming: “The Court renders Justice in the name of the French people!“
This show of authoritarianism aroused supportive reactions in the room, which the Public Prosecutor had immediately sanctioned (with the expulsion of one person). The mother, father, brother and other relatives of the defendant left the room in protest.
Please note, court clerk: in the France of 2023, one does not criticize justice; the academic concept of “criminalization” is a “neologism“; and a literature dissertation is an exhibit in a terrorist case.
“Can you be in two places at once? DGSI and judicial fiction.
There are those in the criminal justice world who say that the intelligence services have been badly traumatized by the fiasco of the “Tarnac” affair. This is certainly not true: the workforce has largely changed and their image has been revitalized, even on the radical left (thanks to the jihadist attacks and Médiapart’s sources).
PICTURE : “When you’re “ultra-left” and the DGSI is watching you
what you do
DGSI report“
However, there are other types of disorder that the entire criminal justice system displays symptoms of: paranoia and mythomania.
We had already ironized that a “nice team” [chouette team] could become – through the prism of a homeland security agent under political pressure – a “shot team” [shot team]. This time, on the one hand, we have a sound system recording what Svink is doing: “tapping with a hammer and spatula into a dish” (as he explains). And on the other, a tailing report which claims to hear “a burst of airsoft fire“. Another false report that speaks volumes about the officers’ subjectivity.
But police trickery takes on its full gravity when it ends up in a judge’s head. It was only at the end of the hearing that we realized that, for several hours, a defendant had been summoned to explain remarks he had not made three years ago.
It wasn’t until a lawyer asked to play back the “original” audio from a audio-surveillance that we realized that the words transcribed had simply not been said.
The extract in question was a banal phrase: “we need to develop good habits” transformed into “develop objectives“. What are these objectives, the judge asked solemnly? What could this sentence be hiding? Quite simply, nothing.
Neither the judge nor PNAT bothered to check their sources. Nor did the judge inquire about the law concerning the status of artificier. A true parody that pretends to be serious.
However, the sound recordings are the raw material of this explosive case, which is why the defense requested that the two most prolific agents be summoned. Expert reports have been drawn up on the basis of these transcripts, as have serious accusations. Everything suggests that the agents themselves manipulated many of the transcripts to make them false.
But the judge had been warned. All December 8 defendants acquitted!
When we arrive in the courthouse, we don’t really understand where we are. There’s a huge difference, an asymmetry, when you read the charges against the accused “terrorist project against the state, cops, military, etc etc” and see that at this trial there are no TV cameras, no journalists jumping on the defendants, their relatives and their lawyers, no barriers all around and in the courtroom. Just the usual bag checks, even though we were invited to the trial of the ultra-left fomenting terrorist attacks against the state and its cops. Should we be happy about this when, at the same time, Rédoine Faïd is on trial at the Paris Court of Appeal and Assize Court, in central Paris, for escaping from prison and another trial for complicity in the murder of 2 police officers, and there are hundreds of police officers and barriers around the court, inside, etc. etc.? We really thought we’d see the same arsenal deployed, given the usual judicial and media treatment of the ultra-left and ultra-violent black blocs, bent on destroying everything. In the end, it seems we’re not as dangerous as they say. Even they make us feel that way.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that the cops, the courts and the media are ignoring this trial, that it’s better for them to hide so as not to reveal the truth, and that this affair is nothing but a ridiculous set-up. As we enter the courtroom, where we hear the questions of the judges and prosecutors, we return to the trial of the ultra-left, where they seek to paint a portrait of bad people thirsting for violence against the cops and the state. At the same time, we remain in a place where we try not to attract too much attention from the outside world.
And at the same time as this trial, in court, people are still being tried for setting garbage cans alight, taking part in demonstrations or in a “grouping with a view to committing violence”, rebelling (generally after being arrested and beaten by the police), not giving their DNA and/or PIN code in police custody, without cameras or journalists, but being convicted, often without any evidence other than the report of the cop who chose to arrest the person. So that we can prove to good citizens that we’re right to be concerned about these demonstrators and people rebelling against the established order, the proof being that they’ve been condemned, in the greatest silence, to anything and everything. They are also often acquitted of acts of violence and grouping, because they were randomly arrested, but convicted of refusing DNA and PINs in police custody, because these people still need to be convicted… but that’s not specified. We hope that the 4-week trial will succeed in demonstrating this nonsense.
Solidarity with comrades on trial from October 3th to 27th in Paris !
THE DECEMBER 8th CASE. 