Two articles discussing how state terrorism is applied against environmental activists. The first article from Reporterre tells how state terrorism is used against environmentalists, as in any self-respecting dictatorship, sequestration and torture (beating). The second article is Contre Attaque analyzes the situation and its purpose: to terrorize.

In the basement of anti-terrorism, the hell of environmental activists

Reporterre

Brutal arrests, endless police custody. 17 people were arrested on April 8 as part of an action against Lafarge in 2023, with “disproportionate” anti-terrorism resources. They tell.

It is 6 a.m., in the Paris region, Monday April 8, when Guillaume is awakened by the sound of “water hammer”, then by the “enormous crash” of the “broken down” door of one of his neighbors . A few minutes later, he heard a second attempt to break into the home of another of his neighbors. After two errors, the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) team finally arrived in front of his apartment. Opening the door, Guillaume finds himself face to face with an assault rifle pointed in his direction.

“On the ground, turn around,” the hooded agents shout at him. In a few seconds, the teacher finds himself face down, both hands handcuffed behind his back. “They are starting to go wild,” he says. Punches and kicks to the ribs and stomach. “Come on, one last one,” a brigade agent is said to have told him before punching him in the arch with a shell glove. In the medical report drawn up the day after he was taken into police custody and which Reporterre consulted, the doctor noted several bruises on his ribs and face.

“Dazed”, Guillaume listens to the charges: criminal association, damage during a meeting and kidnapping during an action against a Lafarge concrete plant near Rouen, on December 10. Activists invaded the site and emptied bags of concrete coloring pigment and barrels of sand. Guillaume then observes the search of his apartment. His phone is sealed and several photos are taken. Stickers, books, notes, a skate helmet, a scarf. “Every time they found something, they asked if it was protest material,” he says.

 

Typical profile of the “radical environmental activist”

At the same time, near Rouen, BRI police officers suddenly burst into a house by mistake, due to a change of address. France Bleu echoes the “trauma” of the family who paid the price. A BRI intervention team ends up arriving at Mathilde’s house [*]. “Armed agents entered the house, where my two children aged 4 and 8 were. I felt like I was being held hostage,” she describes.

Here again, his electronic devices are placed under seal, and the agents are interested in all the elements which could “corroborate the profile of the radical environmentalist that they imagine”. A poster on the Tarnac affair (the sabotage of TGV lines in 2008), another on the Notre-Dame-des-Landes zad, books such as How Everything Can Collapse by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, or You don't dissolve an uprising.

Put in a car, blindfolded, eight of the seventeen arrested were taken at high speed to the premises of the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate (SDAT), in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine). Head to the fourth basement. After the search, they are placed in front of a clear mirror for “papering”. “We are given a number and we look straight ahead, like in an American series,” explains Mathilde. They are directed to their neon-lit cell, under video surveillance, in complete isolation. “I clearly had the impression of being a terrorist,” remembers Guillaume, who would not see the light of day again until the morning of Thursday April 11, after 74 hours in police custody. From his cell, he does not hear the slogans chanted by some supporters in front of the SDAT premises: “Lafarge terrorist, free our comrades!” »

The days are punctuated by searches, meals and interviews with the judicial police officer. The first is devoted to the personal and political profile of those held in police custody. They are interrogated pell-mell on their knowledge of “theories of disarmament or the climate fresco”, “of Extinction Rebellion, Youth for Climate or The Uprisings of the Earth”, on their opinion concerning the action taken against Lafarge factory in Bouc-Bel-Air in 2022 (where several sabotages were carried out) or even government policy on ecology.

The following hearings are devoted to their supposed involvement in the action of December 10, on the Lafarge-Holcim site in Val-de-Reuil, near Rouen, as well as to the elements collected during the four months of investigation and searches. . “They had a photo of me on the day of a rally against the dissolution of the Earth Uprisings,” reports Mathilde.

 

“Scare an entire generation of environmentalists”

Thursday April 11, nine of those arrested received a summons to the Évreux criminal court for June 27. Until then, five defendants have been placed under judicial supervision with an obligation to report to the police station every two weeks, and for some of them a ban on appearing in Eure and making contact.  “The use of anti-terrorist means is a way of marking our bodies and our minds, to scare an entire generation of environmentalists,” summarizes Guillaume, who intends to make a report to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) and contact the Defender of Rights.  Mathilde is one of the eight defendants released without further action. After 60 “exhausting and distressing” hours in the SDAT basement, she was released on the evening of Wednesday April 10. “They released me, handcuffed behind my back and blindfolded, in a street in Paris, in the middle of the night, without a telephone. I had a bag with my panties from which they took DNA,” says this woman.  The use of these “disproportionate” means aimed to “dissuade and intimidate” the activists, according to Mathilde’s lawyer, Aïnoha Pascual. “I think that the real reason is that the Ministry of the Interior makes it a personal matter and sends its services to send a message: all actions in defense of ecology will receive this police and judicial system in response. »  In the eyes of the activists questioned, the message is undoubtedly also aimed at industrialists: “Polute, you are protected”. “It’s absurd,” reacted one of them. Anti-terrorist agents are being mobilized on this case which concerns a company, Lafarge, itself suspected of having supported terrorist organizations. » Source: Reporterre Anti-terrorist police terrorism Counter attack On April 8, a new raid by anti-terrorist police targeted the environmental movement.  At dawn, 17 people were kidnapped from their homes by hooded and heavily armed individuals, and taken to jail for several days, suspected of having participated in a demonstration against a cement factory. https://www.legrandsoir.info/terrorisme-d-etat-contre-les-ecologistes.html TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR  it's time for being earnest.....