Monday evening was agitated in Strasbourg with degradations on the sidelines of the demonstration against the pension reform. The thugs had then found the police facing them, for sometimes muscular clashes. With the use of a “trap”?
Questioned in the National Assembly by the deputy La France insoumise (LFI) of Bas-Rhin Emmanuel Fernandes, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, assured that there had been “an exit to the net”. The police then authorized the people “to go out two by two […] after making sure that they were not carrying any dangerous object, ”explained the tenant of Place Beauvau.
This “trap” took place in the center of Strasbourg, in an alley of the tourist district of “Little France”, after a rally against the rejection of motions of censure, followed by a “wild” demonstration which lasted until late In the evening.
According to the account given by Emmanuel Fernandes with several people claiming to have been in this “trap”, the alley, “no more than 2.50 meters wide” and “fifty meters long” and in which there were “a hundred people”, “was clearly surrounded, blocked on both sides”.
Gérald Darmanin mentioned “about fifty radical elements” who “did not come out” when the police had asked them to. “A part of the demonstrators then found themselves” in the alley while the police “were around the block”, according to the minister.
A “gassing” denounced
The LFI deputy, who denounced “police violence”, spoke of “videos” proving, according to him, “that on both sides of the street”, there was “no possibility of leaving […] for a good fifteen minutes. On one of them, we can see many people in a narrow street blocked by the police. A gray smoke hangs in the air, insults burst out and a woman shouts “we have to get out!” »
The people suffered a “gassing”, said Emmanuel Fernandes, according to which “at least two tear gas canisters” were launched. The policing scheme, which dictates that the police permanently offer the possibility of leaving in the event of encirclement, “has not been respected”, he estimated. “A 22-year-old demonstrator” was taken care of “after a slight discomfort”, indicated Gérald Darmanin, according to whom “the return to calm came quickly”.