Toulouse: about the November 15th raids and arrests

2011-11-17 perquisitions Toulouse

On July 5th 2011, Labège PJJ (Legal Protection of Youth) offices were visited, turned upside down and tagged as a protest against its participation in jailing young people. While the PJJ cried over its work conditions, at the Lavaur EPM (Youth Jail), which is coordinated by the PJJ and the prison administration, kids considered as lost were smashed up by the infamous ERIS unit (Regional Team of Intervention and Safety).

On tuesday November 15th, in Toulouse, seven homes, some of them squats, were raided and searched by a hundred policeman. Computers, telephones, books, posters and personal effects were seized. Following these events, seven person were placed in custody, four other ones were interrogated and a family in the process of getting legal papers, was arrested and released within the same day. After 32 hours police custody, four were placed in remand on request of Mr. Suc, the examining magistrate. A person is on probation, another must remain at disposal of the judge as a witness. Criminal charges are: “participation within a group in order to prepare violence against people, destruction, property damage”. “Violence committed within a group without causing inability”, “degradation or deterioration of property within a group”

That the people arrested are guilty or innocent does not matter. By always building more walls, by physically locking up us behind bars or in cages, the legal and prison system is hitting us today, as it does every day  on many other ones, to preserve the white, middle-class, patriarchal privileged.

One will not conceal our rage, nor our solidarity.
Freedom for all the jailed women and men!