Representatives of the Ministry of Justice acknowledged Monday, May 15 before the administrative court the existence of a nominative file in Lille of people placed in custody during the mobilization on pensions, a simple "management tool" according to them.
The court was examining two applications for interim relief filed by the Association for the Defence of Constitutional Liberties (Adelico) and the Union of Lawyers of France, as well as by the League of Human Rights (LDH) after an article in Mediapart denouncing such a file. The judge is expected to issue his decision Thursday on its legality.
Surnames, first names, dates of birth
It is an excel spreadsheet, named "Follow-up of criminal proceedings - pension reform movement" detailing the surnames, first names, dates of birth of people taken into custody during demonstrations, and the criminal consequences given. According to the ministry, this file is authorized by the decree governing the Casiopée database, which gathers in secure software the data of defendants, victims or witnesses of judicial proceedings of the last ten years.
The spreadsheet examined "simply gathers the procedures related to the same event, which Casiopea does not allow to do in real time", and contains "no other information" than those authorized in this database, detailed at the hearing a representative of the ministry. If "the chancellery did not give this instruction", it was a "tool for local management", he assured. This "allows the management of a particular event" with a high "volume of police custody," explained another representative, referring to the existence of other files of this type in other cities.
'Political opinion'
By gathering nominative information, prosecutors "allowed themselves to add a major data: a political opinion", all these people having protested against the reform, objected Jean-Baptiste Soufron, lawyer of Adelico and SAF. "It is not allowed" and "it amounts to the filing of political opponents," he denounced. "If the goal is only statistical, why keep identifying data, and not be satisfied with a survey number," said LDH lawyer Marion Ogier.
According to her, a few dozen people have potentially been filed, 50 to 100 arrests having taken place in the jurisdiction of Lille since March 17, when the file would have been created following the hardening of the mobilization after the use of 49.3. The Lille prosecutor and the Douai public prosecutor, who were also the subject of the appeals, were neither present nor represented at the hearing.