Two men appeared, in La Rochelle and Niort, for having, on November 6, 2021, cut out at the cutter and set fire to the tarpaulin of a reserve of agricultural use in Cramchaban, in Charente -Maritime, at the end of a demonstration.
by Frédéric Zabalza (La Rochelle, correspondent)
Where does the right to civil disobedience start and where does it start? Can a court recognize “the state of ecological necessity”? The trial against antibassine activists, which was held in La Rochelle Thursday, January 5, before another meeting the next day at the Niort court (Deux-Sèvres), turned to the debate between jurists.
After the spectacular – and unsuccessful – in full hearing on November 28, 2022 in the Niort court, of five defendants who had participated in the Holy Soline demonstration a month earlier, the opponents of the water reserves agricultural use did not fail to express their arguments this time. Romain Rivière (31) and Nathanaël Branco (28) gave them this opportunity. These two animal trainers of training were tried to have, on November 6, 2021, cut out at the cutter and set fire to the tarpaulin of a reserve in Cramchaban, northeast of Charente-Maritime, at the end of a demonstration. They were identified following “a long investigation” among a dozen authors. One of them also refused to submit to a DNA sample.
Applauded at their entry in court by nearly 200 activists from the Collective Bassines NO Merci, among which LFI MEPs Watch out and Aurélie found, they refuse to answer questions from the magistrates. Everyone, however, justifies in a discourse the actions carried out against the basins, according to them, “illegal” of the authorized union association of irrigation (ASAI) of the rocks. The construction of five reservations, including that of Cramchaban, twice, from 2009 to 2022, was canceled by the Administrative Court of Poitiers, then by the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal. This did not prevent the group of farmers at the origin of the project from digging them, filling them and using them to water crops.
“passive resistance”
Called as a witness, Cécile Guenon, ex-lawyer of the Nature Environment Association 17, indicates that the same morning, the public rapporteur of the State Council concluded that the exploitation of reserves is inadmissibility, marking for It “ends the judicial soap opera”.
The Asai of Roches and rural coordination, civil parties in this case, are of the same opinion. Their lawyer, M e le Breton, disputes the illegality of the basins and assures that they were “legally developed, under the supervision of the State” and “always followed by the administration”.
“The State does not do much to enforce its own rules”, launches the lawyer of the activists, M e Huriet, qualifying in passing the Asai as a “association of criminals “. From there, the debate on the substance: is an act of sabotage justified if the degraded property is not legal? For the representative of the public prosecutor, Thierry May, “the state of necessity cannot make a litter of the rule of law”. Confident that he does not like the word of “eco-director”, used by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, after the clashes of Holy Soline, recognizing that the two defendants in the virgin locker have “not” Profile of delinquents “, the magistrate nevertheless notes that civil disobedience is based on” passive, non -violent resistance “. He has never seen either “scientific positioning decided on the irrigation system” allowing to deny the usefulness of basins.
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