“Police everywhere justice nowhere.
Can the slogan summarize the incredible hearing incident that occurred this Thursday at the Aix-en-Provence Criminal Court (Bouches-du-Rhône)?
Me Paul Sollacaro, lawyer, was taken out of the courtroom by police at the request of the president.
An unprecedented scene in the rather hushed world of "dresses".
And which continued this Friday with a standoff between the president and the other lawyers.
The first pursuing a trial in the face of entirely empty defense benches and ten lonely defendants, and the second expressing their discontent on the steps of the courthouses of Nice and Marseille.
It all started on Thursday with a trivial request.
The lawyer from Nice Me Paul Sollacaro, who defends a suspected drug trafficker in a vast cocaine importation case, requests the severance of his client's file, suffering from Covid-19 and unable to appear at the hearing.
Refusal of the president, Marc Rivet.
Tone up.
Moments later, the police forcefully kick the lawyer out of the room.
"It's rape, judicial-police violence"
A surreal scene.
"Even a thug is not treated like that, it is a rape, a judicial-police violence, chokes Paul Sollacaro.
My client tested positive.
I sent all the documents to ask the magistrate to sever his case, that is to say that he be tried later.
This did not suit us because he risks up to twenty years in prison and he wants to explain himself.
The president refused, without even going out to deliberate or speak to his assessors.
The judge didn't want my client to come.
He gets angry, cuts me off and tells me he's going to get me out.
I insist, then he asks for my expulsion.
Between five and eight policemen then come out on all sides.
I tell them that I am in a robe, that I intervene for the defense, that one cannot ask me that, that I will call the President of the Bar.
And there, the police are urgent.
They push me, push me around and stalk me.
I was surrounded, in a dress, that of my father, who was also physically attacked
(Editor's note: his father, Antoine Sollacaro, was assassinated in Ajaccio in 2012)
.
"
Immediately after this incident, his colleagues withdrew from the trial.
And the prosecution itself then supports a general referral of the hearing in order to calm the spirits.
But President Rivet is not loosening the screw.
He then asks the bar to appoint lawyers appointed to prosecute.
And this Friday morning, it is the President of the Bar who presents himself, alone.
Great mobilization of our Bar this morning in support of our colleague #PaulSollacaro.
Thank you for responding to our call to rally pic.twitter.com/d9SeLxPLPQ
- UJA de Nice (@UJAdeNice) March 12, 2021
Denouncing "an abuse of the power of the hearing police" and "a deadly attitude", Philippe Bruzzo once again requests the referral of the trial, still supported by the prosecution, to "take cognizance of a file of more than 3000 pages.
In view of the intolerable progress of the hearing, the President of the Bar cannot send officially appointed lawyers who risk being abused at any time as their colleague was ”, he is justified.
“But he cannot leave defendants who have asked for assistance defenseless.
Faced with the president's new refusal, Me Bruzzo withdrew and the hearing continued without defense or pleading.
"We are outraged by the attitude of a magistrate who went wild and who had the police unlawfully expel a lawyer who was defending an accused", underlines Me Jacquemin, another lawyer, who gave up defending his client during this trial.
Lawyers also organized demonstrations of support in Nice and Marseille on Friday which brought together several hundred black dresses.
The first president of the court of appeal also launched a solemn appeal for calm this Friday afternoon.
A magistrate renowned for his sense of the formula
The Aix prosecutor's office, he supports the judge: "The court rejected this request for disjunction in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecutor's office which considered it impossible to split the judgment of the various defendants," recalls Achille Kiriakides, prosecutor of the Republic of Aix-en -Provence.
On the announcement of this decision, Me Sollacaro got carried away and addressed the president in virulent terms which led this magistrate to have to use the police powers given to him by law to make him drive, by police, outside the courtroom.
"
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Marc Rivet, the president in question, is a magistrate with a strong character, sometimes very sour humor and sharp formulas, who rubbed shoulders with Corsican files for several years, crossing swords, at the time, with the father of Paul Sollacaro.
The son, he claims to have never had any incident with him previously.
While the dresses are tearing, the defendants were sentenced this Friday to terms ranging from six months suspended to six years firm. Without a lawyer, but not without noise.
