Terror Raids Against Autonomists in France

Anti terror raids in France on the 11th November 2008

In the early morning on the 11th november the french police conducted one of the biggest police raids in the latest history in the name of counter terrorism against the left in france. The police searched several buildings and appartements in Paris, Rouen, Limoges, the La Meuse region and in the village of Tarnac in central France. During this raid ten people were arrested and taken into custody, nine of them are now confronted with serious charges of terrorist conspiracy and malicious mischief. The official reason for the raids are sabotage actions on the high speed train (TGV) network conducted with grapples in the night of the 7th to the 8th november in four different places in France.

The raid in Tarnac, a village of 350 inhabitants and the supposed base of the so called terrorists, was conducted with over 150 policemen of the national police, anti terrorist brigades, forensic units, explosives track hounds, and so on and took the whole day. The village of Tarnac was totally closed off for at least half a day, the public life was paralysed. In total, six people in Tarnac, two people in Rouen, one person in Paris and one person in the La Meuse region were taken into custody that day. Under the new anti terrorist law in France they could be hold in police custody for 96 hours without having the right to consult a lawyer. One Person, the mother of one of the still accused, was released without charges after three days. The other nine are all charged with “participation in a criminal organisation with terrorist intent”. Four of them were released after 96 hours of custody and are now free under judicial control. The other five are now in detention and are additionally charged with “collaborative malicious mischief with terrorist intent” by wich the investigators refer to the actions of sabotage on the SNCF network. One of them is even charged with “being the leader of a terrorist cell”.
Until today, neither the lawyers nor the public have seen any airtight evidence against the accused. The police has only presented iron bars, welding material, climbing equipment and so called “anarchist” literature (especially a book called “l´insurrection qui vient”, the coming uprising, written by an author collective calling themselves “comite invisible”, the invisible committee) to prove the guilt of the nine accused.
Nevertheless, the police raid was accompanied by a huge press campaign. The journalists launched their first articles at 8.30h in the morning having obviously been “well informed” by the police. Thats why in the first place it was for all the media totally clear that the arrested were the sought-after terrorists. Now the lawyers claim that the presumtion of innocence of their clients was heavily violated and that the court of justice is prejudiced.

Two days after the raids a public meeting took place in the village of Tarnac. More than hundred people attended this meeting to show their solidarity with the arrested and the people still on the ground. That evening the idea of starting a local support committee was born. The following day the first press conference of the three initial members of the local support committee took place where they demanded the immediate release of all the arrested and the immediate retreat of the accusation of “terrorism”.

The local support committee needs your support. There is a urgent need of donations to pay the lawyers and to support the people in detention.

The site is www.soutien11novembre.org

Here is a short translated text from the site of the local support committee:

How to support?

After the first shock-wave in the media it is first of all important to
create public pressure and not to let the affair calm down. We have to
maintain the pressure during the investigation. To achieve this goal,
everyone can start a local support commitee: organise events, take all
opportunities to explain the circumstances and inform about the situation,
collect funds…

An international solidarity movement is necessary to achieve the
liberation of the accused as fast as possible.

In the same time it is essential to guarantee a minimum of vital needs for
the imprisoned such as clothes, cigarettes, hygenical products etc…
Money is equally necessary to pay the lawyers, to allow the loved-ones to
visit the people in prison who are imprisoned in the region of Paris until
further notice.

The financial needs are real and urgent.

The donations will also be used for certain activities of the support
comittees.

A bank account is in creation and will soon be published on this site.

You can also write letters to the imprisoned to the adress of the support
comitte Tarnac, they will be forwarded to the prisoners. The adress is:

Gabrielle, Manon, Yldune, Benjamin, Julien
Comite de soutien aux inculpes de Tarnac
19170 Le Bourg
Tarnac
France

Thank you very much for your support…

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TERRORISM OR TRAGICOMEDY?

On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which
belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350
inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order
to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried
to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these
nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and "accused of
criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions." The newspapers
reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State
"had congratulated local and state police for their diligence."
Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let's try to
examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the
results of this "diligence."

First the reasons: the young people under investigation "were tracked
by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho
autonomous milieu." As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior
specifies, "their discourse is very radical and they have links with
foreign groups." But there is more: certain of the suspects
"participate regularly in political demonstrations," and, for example,
"in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et
Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the
intensification of laws restricting immigration." So political
activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic
monstrosities such as "anarcho autonomous milieu") or the active
exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are
therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of
the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior
(DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political consc
ience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when
faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier
Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration
laws.

As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons,
explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from
it. SDAT officers discovered "documents containing detailed
information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and
departure times of trains." In plain French: an SNCF train schedule.
But they also confiscated "climbing gear." In simple French: a ladder,
such as one might find in any country house.

Now let's turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the
presumed head of this terrorist gang, "a 33 year old leader from a
well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his
parents." This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some
friends) formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses
– while no doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our
time. I knew Julien Coupat during that period and, from an
intellectual point of view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.

Let's move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story.
The suspects' activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts
against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV
trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to
believe the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents themselves,
can in no way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case,
hinder communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains
are often late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national
railway of terrorism. It's a case of minor offences, even if we don't
condone them. On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that
there are perhaps "perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not
possible to attribute a criminal act to any one of them."

The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those
engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and
economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as
potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this
accusation. We must have the courage to say with clarity that today,
numerous European countries (in particular France and Italy), have
introduced laws and police measures that we would previously have
judged barbaric and anti-democratic, and that these are no less
extreme than those put into effect in Italy under fascism. One such
measure authorizes the detention for ninety-six hours of a group of
young – perhaps careless – people, to whom "it is not possible to
attribute a criminal act." Another, equally serious, is the adoption
of laws that criminalize association, the formulations of which are
left intentionally vague and that allow the classification of
political acts as having terrorist "intentions" or "inclinat
ions," acts that until now were never in themselves considered terrorist.

— Giorgio Agamben
Libération, November 19, 2008

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