Up to eight months of suspended prison sentence were requested on Wednesday by the Marseille prosecutor’s office against three demonstrators suspected of violence against the police during a rally in early February against the inauguration of the first local Marseilles of the party of extreme right Reconquest!, the party of Éric Zemmour. The judgment in this case, for which the lawyers for the defendants pleaded for release and pointed to “the many procedural flaws”, was reserved for April 13.
The demonstration, in which some 200 people took part, at the call of trade unions, anti-racist associations or left-wing political parties, took place peacefully until it was dispersed by the police. The defendants, two men and a woman aged 19, 23 and 33 respectively, with no criminal records, are notably being prosecuted for “violence against a police officer” and “concealment of the face”.
“This folder is empty! exclaimed the latter’s lawyer, Charlotte Bonnaire, believing that her client “was confused with another person”. As for the concealment of their faces, in particular by an anti-Covid mask, Maître Philippe Chaudon justified it by explaining that activists from Eric Zemmour’s party were photographing the demonstrators from the balcony of their premises.
The prosecutor refuted any political trial
“This concealment served to protect their physical integrity against far-right activists who deliver their opponents on social networks,” he explained. The defendants’ lawyers also criticized a “disproportionate” legal procedure, with forty-eight hours of police custody followed by four days of pre-trial detention in Baumettes prison for the three young people.
For her part, prosecutor Eve Tassin refuted any political trial and denied having “received instructions from her hierarchy or from a fantasy at the top”. “What is repressed is not their desire to demonstrate or their political positions but their violent action” against the police, she added, conceding however that the defendants were “not particularly violent or disturbing people” .