“You, the prefects, do not forget that the laws exist for everyone.
And that for your actions, for the police violence suffered by exiles and citizens, we will continue to launch these legal actions against a State totally in violation… ”
This Friday morning, Yann Manzi, the director of Utopia 56, announced that he had filed a complaint, with his association as well as 35 other complainants, against Didier Lallement, the Paris police prefect, Georges-François Leclerc, the Seine prefect -Saint-Denis and Marc Guillaume, the prefect of Île-de-France, after the evacuations ordered by the State on November 17 and 23, 2020, first in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) then place de the Republic in Paris.
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They accuse the three senior officials of "complicity in willful violence", in particular concerning the destruction, degradation and deterioration of tents and belongings belonging to migrants during the evacuations.
The complaint was also lodged against X for “organized gang robbery, willful violence by a person holding public authority and destruction, degradation and deterioration of property belonging to others”.
"There was an organization which aimed to seize the property of exiled people"
“We wondered what would be the best legal qualification to describe the way in which the police chief, in particular, organized shelters which, in reality, were not, explains lawyer Raphaël Kempf. And we noted that there was a material organization which aimed to seize the property of the exiled people, in particular the tents, which are their property. The prefect of police in particular requested the presence of an empty truck to pick them up. "
Among the plaintiffs, some migrants testified explaining that they were prevented from recovering what was their only way to sleep in the shelter. "What we see through the statements of Didier Lallement is his desire to prevent these camps from being reconstituted in the future," continues the lawyer. For people to be deprived of their material possibilities to sleep in tents again is called theft. ”
Her colleague Noémie Saidi Cottier, from the Alliance des Avocats pour les Droits de l'Homme, also emphasized the “willful violence” against those present on those days, both exiles and refugees. associations that "elected officials, journalists, lawyers ..." She insisted on the "vulnerability" of evacuees, who "come from countries at war and, for many, had never experienced such violence in their own country. "
"I realized that my civic engagement was putting me in danger"
Elected officials from Paris, such as Léa Vaza (EELV) or Danielle Simonnet (LFI), joined in the complaint, but also volunteer citizens like Nawal Karroum, from the Solidarité migrants Wilson collective. "The facts were for me extremely shocking", explains the one who says to have been, Porte de Paris, "victim of tear gas fire", describing a real "manhunt" carried out by the police.
Place de la République, she also says she was "thrown to the ground, strangled" by a police officer who pulled her by his scarf. “I realized that my civic and voluntary commitment was putting me in danger,” she continues. Not because the work itself is dangerous, nor because the people we assist are dangerous. But because we are victims of repression by the security services of the municipality, the national police, who put pressure on associations in order to continue to make these exiled people invisible. While we remedy a failure of the public authorities. "
On November 23, the violence observed on the sidelines of the evacuation of Place de la République had sparked a wave of indignation even within the government. The same evening, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had evoked “shocking images” and requested a “detailed report” from the prefect of police. The IGPN, the “police force”, had opened an investigation into these acts of violence, as well as the Paris prosecutor's office.