The images traveled the world: between columns of smoke, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was vandalized on December 1, 2018 by hundreds of protesters who, in one of the most violent protests of the
yellow vests
that put the Government of Emmanuel in check Macron, broke into the emblematic capital monument, which they left full of damage and graffiti against the Executive.
Nine people have responded since Monday and throughout the week before a Paris court on charges of "degradation" and "theft" at the national monument, although the instructors of the case themselves acknowledge that they are not primarily responsible.
The case of a tenth defendant was separated from the rest at the beginning of the process.
On the first day of hearings, which will last until Friday, the president of the court spent a good time listing the material damages, which amounted to one million euros, including five works of art that required restoration work that lasted a long time. Several months.
She also read some of the graffiti - "not too pleasant for the President of the Republic," said the magistrate during her reading, according to a journalist present in the room - that the protesters left at the monument that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered to be erected to commemorate his victory. in the battle of Austerlitz in 1805 and at whose feet is also the tomb of the unknown soldier of the First World War.
In fact, two weeks before the "looting" of the national monument, definition of the acts in the police reports that the judge considered valid, Macron had commemorated in that same place the end of the first world war conflict of the 20th century together with several leaders internationals, including the American Donald Trump and the Russian Vladimir Putin.
"There is no justification for the Arc de Triomphe to be sullied in this way," said a disconcerted Macron a day after the violent protest, when he visited the monument as soon as he returned from the G20 summit in Argentina.
More than 400 people were arrested on December 1 in the protest called “act III” of the
yellow vests
, whose protests every Saturday throughout the country for more than a year forced the Macron government to back down in its intention to increase a fuel tax and promise reforms and tax cuts.
However, in the first of the trials for the vandalism of that day, which also left a hundred burned vehicles, damaged shop windows and looted shops, among others, there were only 10 people, eight men and two women, mostly in their twenties. Without a criminal record and that even the prosecution has recognized are not the main responsible for the disturbances and damages.
"It is obligatory to verify that the instigators, the main perpetrators of the events, have not been identified," says the accusation of the case, according to the Agence France Presse, which indicates that they can face up to 10 years in prison.
Only seven defendants appeared at Monday's hearing, two more - women - were represented by their lawyers, AFP noted.
A postcard and a keychain
The defendants are accused of trying to break a door with a fire extinguisher, damaging a statue or stealing almost 300 postcards.
During the process "we are going to listen to the explanations of people who left with some postcards or a key ring of the Eiffel Tower as a souvenir of that demonstration," criticized in recent days one of his lawyers, Véronique Massi, whose client alleges that he entered at the monument to "take refuge" from the police charges against the protesters.
"It gives the feeling that they are going to pay for the others, for everything that happened, that there had to be some culprits," lamented another of the defenders, Noémie Saidi-Cottier.
On the contrary, Jean-Philippe Morel, the lawyer for an association dedicated to the preservation of the national heritage and which has been constituted as a private prosecution, the attack was not accidental.
"They did not choose the Arc de Triomphe at random: it is an emblematic looting, a national desecration," he also declared on the eve of the trial, during which he announced that he would nevertheless only claim one euro as "symbolic reparation."
In addition to these 10 defendants, another seven people are awaiting trial for the same day.
This is a minor who will appear before the juvenile court and six other individuals accused of "unauthorized intrusion into a place classified as historical heritage."