PAmong the eleven members of the field action coordination unit (CCAT) placed in police custody on Wednesday June 19, nine are placed in pre-trial detention and seven, including two mothers, have just left New Caledonia during the night on Saturday June 22 by military plane to be incarcerated in different French prisons.
The investigating judges, however, considered that they had“serious or consistent indications” making their participation as perpetrator or accomplice in acts relating to organized crime likely.
The speed and brutality of these judicial decisions aroused surprise, first and foremost that of the lawyers who were not prepared for them. For the lawyer Mathias Chauchat, “the prosecutor’s requisitions, the acts of the investigating judges and the decisions of the liberty and detention judges were coordinated with the sole aim of obtaining removal and imprisonment in France to show the firmness of the State “.
The business itself is not offshored
In fact, we are astonished by the extraordinary degree of preparation and execution of the procedure opened since May 17, just a few days after the explosion of unrest experienced by the territory on the evening of the vote by the French Parliament. of the constitutional bill against the unfreezing of the electoral body.
Read also | In New Caledonia, the fear of a new night of violence after the transfer of independence activists to mainland France
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The search for the supposed sponsors of the violence, led in particular by the anti-terrorist sub-directorate, quickly led to the organization of an airlift to French prisons.
Read also | In New Caledonia, two independence activists imprisoned in Nouméa
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This removal more than 17,000 kilometers from their home and family, an extremely painful decision for those involved, as we can imagine, recalls the dark hours of 1988 and the exile of the prisoners after the crisis in the Ouvéa cave. It also raises, beyond its symbolic significance, the question of the good administration of justice because the case itself is not outsourced.
At a time of relative de-escalation of tensions
The investigation will therefore be carried out from Nouméa with defendants incarcerated in Mulhouse. [Haut-Rin]Riom [Puy-de-Dôme] or Bourges which, we can imagine, will in no way facilitate exchanges with investigating judges or lawyers.
The timing of this judicial decision also raises questions even as New Caledonia, like the rest of the Republic, enters into the electoral campaign for the legislative elections since the dissolution of the Assembly decided by the President of the Republic. The territory seemed to be experiencing a phase conducive to a relative de-escalation of tensions allowing hope, among other things, for the reopening of schools.
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