Amnesty International Report 1998 - France

(This report covers the period January-December 1997) Criminal proceedings were under way against conscientious objectors to the national service laws. Measures of administrative detention continued against some political refugees. There were reports of fatal shootings, ill-treatment and rape by law enforcement officers. Officers involved in cases of fatal shootings or ill-treatment in previous years were, after long delays, brought to justice; they were acquitted or sentenced to nominal terms of imprisonment. Parliamentary elections were held in May and June, as a result of which the leader of the Socialist Party, Lionel Jospin, became Prime Minister of a broad left coalition government, which included members of the Communist Party and the Green Party. In July the UN Human Rights Committee considered the government's third periodic report on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr). The Committee was "seriously concerned" by the number and gravity of the allegations it had received of ill-treatment by law enforcement officers of detainees and others, including unnecessary use of firearms resulting in a number of deaths. It underlined that the risk of such ill-treatment was "much greater in the case of foreigners and immigrants", and expressed concern that in most cases there was little, if any, investigation of complaints of such ill-treatment by the internal administration of the police and the National Gendarmerie. This resulted in "virtual impunity". The Committee also expressed concern at the "failure or the inertia of prosecutors in applying the law to investigating human rights violations where law enforcement officers are concerned and at the delays and unreasonably lengthy proceedings in investigation and prosecution of alleged human rights violations involving law enforcement officers." Among the Committee's recommendations were that France establish an independent mechanism to receive and deal with individual complaints of ill-treatment by law enforcement officers, and that it introduce a comprehensive course in human rights at all levels of their training. The Committee additionally expressed concern that the powers, as a military corps, of the National Gendarmerie were wider than those of the police when operating in a civilian public order situation, and urged that steps be taken to modify or repeal the decree of July 1943 which greatly increased the powers of the gendarmerie in the use of firearms. Another subject of concern was the continued application of the "anti-terrorist" laws, which provide for a centralized court whose prosecutors have special powers of arrest, search and prolonged detention (up to four days) in police custody, and where the accused do not have the same rights in determination of guilt as in the ordinary courts At the end of the year the "loi Chevènement", a new law on immigration that proposes an extension of the right of asylum, was continuing its passage through the French parliament. Meanwhile, large numbers of Kurdish refugees fleeing Iraq were still being intercepted on the frontier between France and Italy and immediately returned across the border. Over 4000 were reported to have been intercepted by police since January There was still no right to claim conscientious objector status during military service and the alternative civilian service available to recognized conscientious objectors remained, at 20 months, twice the length of ordinary military service. In September the new government submitted to parliament a bill reforming compulsory national service. It replaced a similar bill put forward by the previous government (see Amnesty International Report 1997). The law, definitively approved by parliament in October, provided for the suspension by the end of 2002, via a phasing-out process, of compulsory national service, and its replacement with a compulsory one day's instruction in defence issues. Criminal proceedings were pursued against conscientious objectors refusing to conform to the national service laws, with the exception of Jehovah's Witnesses (see Amnesty International Report 1997). The proceedings resulted in prison sentences, usually suspended. Objectors sentenced to periods of detention remained at liberty while awaiting the outcome of appeals lodged with higher courts. Measures of administrative detention continued against some political refugees. For example, a refugee and member of an illegal opposition party in Tunisia spent a fourth year under a form of administrative detention (assignation à résidence). Salah Ben Hédi Ben Hassen Karker, a leading member of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda (Renaissance) had, in his absence, been sentenced to death in Tunisia and was recognized as a political refugee by the French authorities in 1988. A former Interior Minister issued an expulsion order against him in 1993 but no country would accept him. Salah Karker, who was transferred from the Haute-Loire region to that of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in 1995, denied being in any way connected with terrorist activities and had won a number of actions for defamation against magazines and newspapers that reproduced accusations by the Tunisian Government that he belonged to a "terrorist organization". He has not been charged with any criminal offence within France. There were further allegations of ill-treatment, rape and shootings and killings of unarmed people by law enforcement officers. Four Bordeaux police officers were detained in June while under investigation for allegedly "abusing their authority by rape and complicity in rape". An officer called to the scene of a traffic accident and reportedly finding a woman driver to be drunk, was said to have told her that no charges would be brought if she agreed to sleep with him and his colleagues. Several days after the accident he allegedly called at her home, hit her with a truncheon and raped her. The woman lodged a complaint with the police complaints authority, the Inspection générale de la police nationale, in which she claimed that some days later the police officer returned, this time with his colleagues, and a gang rape took place. The four officers, who were taken into custody at the request of the public prosecutor of Bordeaux, and placed in isolation, denied the charges. In October an Egyptian architect was reportedly assaulted and had his leg fractured by four plainclothes police officers in a case of mistaken identity. Ahmed Hamed was visiting France with his mother, a patient at the American hospital in Neuilly, when he was approached by the officers in a launderette. He was reportedly handcuffed and forced towards a waiting car. Resisting what he believed to be a kidnapping, he was violently kicked and his leg was consequently broken. Ahmed Hamed was held in custody for 10 hours, after which he was admitted to hospital. He underwent several operations. The Interior Minister ordered that an administrative inquiry into the case be opened. There were several reports of fatal shootings by police officers during the year. In one incident in December Fabrice Fernandez died instantly when shot in the jaw while handcuffed and under interrogation at a Lyon police station. An officer allegedly fired the fatal shot with a confiscated shotgun. According to the Lyon public prosecutor, Fabrice Fernandez had been arrested with two others by officers of the Brigade Anticriminalité (bac), Anti-Crime Brigade, following a disturbance when a shotgun was fired into the air. The police officer who allegedly fired the fatal shot was suspended from duty, detained and initially charged with manslaughter. The charge was almost immediately increased to murder by the investigating judge. The police officer, who was reported to have already been suspended for assault, later offered his resignation from the police force. Following the death there were riots at La Duchère, the poor inner-city area of Lyon where the death occurred. The Interior Minister stated that: "use of a gun against a handcuffed man without checking whether or not it is loaded is absolutely unacceptable." Violent disturbances also took place over several consecutive nights at Dammarie-les-Lys (Seine-et-Marne) following the death of 16-year-old Abdelkader Bouziane, who was reportedly shot in the neck by a police officer after trying, with friends, to drive through a police road-block. A number of police officers and gendarmes were brought to trial in connection with cases from previous years of fatal shootings or ill-treatment. A large proportion of the cases concerned refugees, immigrants and people of non-European ethnic origin. In February the Bordeaux Court of Appeal upheld the four-month suspended prison sentence against a bac officer for beating Didier Laroche with a truncheon (see Amnesty International Reports 1995 and 1997) In May a police officer was given a 10-month suspended sentence and fined for assaulting Sikh refugee and asylum-seeker Gurnam Singh at the police station in Bobigny in 1996. Two other officers were given a 15-month suspended prison sentence and fined for forging the station records to make it appear that Gurnam Singh had been legitimately detained within their area of authority In June three officers were sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, 15 of which were suspended, and to five years' disqualification from serving in the police force in connection with the assault on Sid Ahmed Amiri, a national of France and Algeria, during a "preventive action" in Marseille (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In October, after continual delays and procedural irregularities, Rhône Court of Assizes sentenced a police officer to a five-year suspended prison term for the fatal shooting of Mourad Tchier, a youth of Algerian origin, in 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1997). In November a gendarme who shot and killed Franck Moret in 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1997) was discharged by the correctional court in Valence. The prosecution, and relatives of Franck Moret appealed against the judgment. Also in November the family of Ibrahim Sy, who was shot dead by a gendarme in 1994 (see Amnesty International Reports 1995 and 1997), appealed to the Court of Cassation after the Rouen Court of Appeal confirmed the decision of the investigating judge that there were no grounds for prosecution. An appeal against a similar decision in the case of Todor Bogdanoviç, an eight-year-old Rom from Serbia who was shot dead by border police near Sospel (see Amnesty International Report 1996), was lodged with an appeal court in Aix-en-Provence in December. The court overturned the decision, rejecting a plea that the police officer had acted in legitimate self-defence, and referred the case to the Court of Assizes on a charge of manslaughter. In July experts on the UN Human Rights Committee had specifically referred to the death of the Romani child when expressing concern not only at the treatment and expulsion of refugees but at what appeared in this case to be an arbitrary and reckless use of firearms. Amnesty International continued to express concern that, because of its punitive length, civilian service did not provide an acceptable alternative to military service. The organization was also concerned that there was still no provision for conscientious objection developed during military service. It reiterated its belief that conscientious objectors to military service should be able to seek conscientious objector status at any time Amnesty International wrote in December to the Interior Minister, urging him to give prompt and thorough consideration to lifting the orders of assignation à résidence and expulsion from Salah Karker if no charges were to be promptly brought against him. The organization explained that it considered people to be detained not only when they were incarcerated but when their freedom of movement was severely restricted. It expressed concern that decisions taken on appeals by Salah Karker against expulsion and assignation à résidence had not been open to scrutiny in a court of law The organization sought information from the authorities about the progress of investigations into incidents of shootings, killings, ill-treatment and rape, and in July submitted information about a number of its concerns on France to the UN Human Rights Committee The case of Todor Bogdanoviç featured in the Amnesty International Week campaign to raise awareness about refugees and the specific needs of child refugees. The organization pressed, among other things, for a full and fair investigation into the disputed circumstances of the child's killing and for the officer to be brought to justice.