Fifteen activists, including 11 with disabilities, wishing to denounce the inaccessibility of places open to the public, were sentenced Wednesday to suspended prison for having in 2018 blocked a TGV and entered the tracks of Toulouse airport.
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Odile Maurin, president of Handi Social and local figure in the cause of disabled people, received the heaviest sentence: six months suspended prison sentence. Another activist in a wheelchair was given a four-month suspended prison sentence, and the others two months suspended. A 16th defendant was fined 750 euros.
Sentences slightly lower than those required by the prosecution, which ranged from three to eight months suspended imprisonment, but still "
scandalous
" for the lawyers of the defendants. “We
often represent justice as a woman with a blindfold. There, I rather have the impression that she was deaf. And that this banner wants to be used to silence activists,
”lamented Me Christophe Lèguevaques, one of the three defense lawyers.
"
We are telling them: be wise and you will not have problems with justice,
" he added, arguing that the "
peaceful
"
action
of these activists was a "
state of necessity
", That is to say that they"
had no other way to make themselves heard
". "
We will appeal, we will go to cassation, and in the end we will go to the European Court of Human Rights to condemn France, which does not want to hear and does not want to understand,
"
insisted
Me Lèguevaques.
For Odile Maurin, justice "
persists
" "
in wanting to condemn for the example of people who only defend themselves
". She also denounced the conditions for the holding of the trial: "
an elevator that is not up to standards, a courtroom where the sanitary gauge is not respected
" and a "
microphone for which it was necessary to raise the tone so that it is plugged in
”. With this court decision, the activist in a wheelchair lamented a "
chain of material and symbolic violence
" against "
citizens who just want to be able to move freely in this country, without being held by the hand like children
".
On October 28, 2018, the defendants carried out a first blocking action, invading the tracks in front of a TGV at Toulouse-Matabiau station and delaying 500 passengers. Some two months later, on December 14, several of these activists entered the runways at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, blocking traffic for an hour.
