A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #358 - Big Brother - El Hacen Diarra, Viry-Châtillon, and Interpol: Chronicles of Control and Repression (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Mobilizations for El Hacen Diarra, who died following police 
intervention in the 20th arrondissement ---- On Wednesday evening, 
January 14, El Hacen Diarra, a 35-year-old Mauritanian man living in the 
Muriers hostel in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, went out onto the 
opposite sidewalk to smoke a cigarette and drink a coffee. The hostel's 
rooms are somewhat overcrowded, and the hallways must be kept clear. 
Police officers from the 20th arrondissement stopped him, and he 
protested the pat-down he was subjected to. He died. A video shows him 
on the ground being brutalized by the police. The autopsy revealed a 
fractured thyroid cartilage and signs of strangulation.

On Sunday the 18th, a tribute was paid to him, organized by his family 
and the hostel's residents' committee. The crowd was large and tightly 
packed. The speeches ranged from denouncing police violence to calling 
for a democratic police force. The following Sunday, a demonstration 
took place from the hostel to the 20th arrondissement police station. 
The crowd was even larger, displaying banners from the residents' 
committee, undocumented immigrant collectives, and various Truth and 
Justice committees. There were also union activists, notably from the 
CGT, and members of the French Communist Party (PCF). This is relatively 
unusual for this type of protest.

It must be said that the 20th arrondissement police station is no 
stranger to violence: in 2007, Lamine Dieng suffocated in a police van; 
between 2019 and 2020, five women and a minor were sexually assaulted 
there; and in 2023, Safyatou, Salif, and Ilan, aged 17, 13, and 14, were 
deliberately run over by a car from the same station. It must also be 
said that the Muriers hostel is a well-organized one (we recently 
reported on the occupation of this hostel under the heading "Without 
Borders"), and that anti-fascist and anti-racist groups are well 
established in the neighborhood. A new demonstration is scheduled for 
February 21, with six demands: immediate justice (indictment of the 
police officers involved in El Hacen's death, justice for Safyatou, 
Salif, and Ilan, and reopening of all cases dismissed without further 
action); truth and transparency (independent investigation under citizen 
oversight with publication of all evidence and an end to the lie about 
"cameras being discharged"); sanctions and dissolution (immediate 
suspension of officers involved in the violence, and disbandment of the 
violent units); an end to racism and police violence (a ban on racial 
profiling and excessive fines, prone restraint and chokeholds, and the 
repeal of the "License to Kill" law); Equality of rights (equal rights 
for residents of hostels, the same rights as all tenants, regularization 
of all undocumented immigrants); reparations and support (recognition of 
state responsibility and financial, medical, and psychological support 
for victims and families, concrete commitments from all candidates in 
the municipal and presidential elections).

Source: A local activist

Use of Interpol
Interpol is an international organization created in 1923 whose goal is 
to promote international police cooperation. Its headquarters are 
currently in Lyon. Interpol has a total of 196 member countries, 
representing almost all the countries in the world. Each member state 
has a National Central Bureau (NCB) that liaises between its national 
police force and those of other countries to form the global network.

Its activities revolve around drug production and trafficking, 
terrorism, money laundering, organized crime, and international crime. 
It is thanks to Interpol that war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko 
Mladic, responsible for the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia, and major 
players in the global cocaine trade, such as Rocco Morabito, a leader of 
the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, were apprehended. These arrests were hailed 
and, according to Interpol, contribute to "creating a safer world." But 
this international police organization has already been embroiled in 
some major scandals. After the war, Interpol gave an internal order not 
to prosecute crimes linked to the Nazi regime, under the pretext that 
they were "political in nature," in order to protect the many police 
officers who had participated in Nazi crimes. For several years, the 
organization has facilitated the persecution of political opponents, 
activists, journalists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities, 
who are hunted down around the world. These abuses of power endanger 
thousands of people, and the organization is fully aware of them. She 
claims to have been tackling the problem for ten years. In vain.

Confidential reports, correspondence between national offices, lists of 
pending notices, names of issuing countries, internal memos from 
oversight bodies... Disclose and the British public broadcaster BBC 
received an unprecedented leak of internal Interpol documents, revealing 
an international scandal at the heart of the prestigious institution; a 
system that transforms a renowned police force into a formidable weapon 
of political oppression. The flaws are staggering. They begin with the 
fraudulent use of "red notices," those infamous police notices that 
allow a state to send an arrest warrant to all member countries of the 
organization. Every year, thousands of red notices are issued without 
the targeted individuals being informed. Many discover them at the 
airport or during a police check, which can lead to their arrest, then 
their imprisonment, and finally their extradition to the country that 
issued the red notice there are currently 86,000 in circulation. These 
tens of thousands of wanted notices are supposed to undergo two rounds 
of review: before they are published, and again afterward by the 
Commission for the Control of Files (CCF) if the individuals concerned 
file a complaint. The purpose of these safeguards is to ensure that the 
request for police assistance complies with the organization's statutes, 
including Article 3, which specifies that "any activity or intervention 
in matters or affairs of a political, military, religious, or racial 
nature is strictly prohibited." In other words, if the institution's 
political neutrality is violated, officers must cancel the notice. The 
CCF itself admits that the number of appeals has increased fivefold in 
the last ten years. In 2024 alone, at least 322 people who believed 
their inclusion in the files was unjustified had their records removed 
by the control commission. A figure that excludes all those who cannot 
afford a lawyer to contest their surveillance, and also excludes all 
those who are unaware of their red notice.

Source: disclose.ngo

Security Overreach in Parliament
As elections approach, and as expected, the number of security bills 
being debated in Parliament (Senate + National Assembly) is exploding! 
La Quadrature du Net has taken stock of the current issues:

The extension of authorization for Algorithmic Video Surveillance (AVS) 
until 2027 continues to move forward. The 2030 Olympics will serve as a 
pretext to extend this trial period, much to the satisfaction of 
industry, even though the very benefit of this technology has a negative 
track record. But the text circulating in Parliament also seeks to 
create a new system prohibiting people from appearing at venues hosting 
major events. The Ministry of the Interior considers the MICAS 
(Individual Administrative Control and Surveillance Measures) to be too 
restrictive for law enforcement, even though it issued over 300 of these 
measures during the 2024 Olympics. It therefore wants to create a new, 
simpler system in its place: "appearance bans" would allow the prefect 
to prevent someone from entering a location without judicial 
intervention or the need for a prior criminal conviction. These bans 
were introduced into law by the Narcotrafficking Act and have already 
been used 1,682 times since June 2025. The 2030 Olympics Act aims to 
extend them to "any person for whom there are serious reasons to believe 
that their behavior constitutes a particularly serious threat to public 
safety." It's hard to be any broader and more vague! This algorithmic 
video surveillance is becoming widespread. Members of Parliament voted 
on Monday, February 16, in its first reading, to pilot the use of 
automated security systems (VSA) to combat theft in stores and shopping 
centers. The legislation proposes implementing technologies that analyze 
live video feeds from surveillance cameras to detect any suspicious 
activity that might suggest a theft is in progress. This software can 
send an alert directly to the store manager's phone, allowing them to 
verify the alert and take appropriate action. We will return to this 
topic later, as the proposed solution is currently considered 
non-compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the 
CNIL (French Data Protection Authority).

Extend the powers of municipal police and rural constables to include 
identity checks and the issuance of fixed-penalty fines (see previous CA 
under this heading). Facilitate the use of automated license plate 
recognition (ALPR) software.

Banning Social Media for Under 15s
Source: Laquadrature.net
Legal Handling of Police Violence
The author of this column has decided to compile a few "cases" from the 
month where trials follow one another and are remarkably similar.

Trial of gratuitous violence against "yellow vest" protesters trapped in 
a Burger King on December 1, 2018: Nine riot police officers from 
Company 43 in Chalon-sur-Saône were finally identified as being among 
those who inflicted the violence, causing lasting injuries to the 
tear-gassed Yellow Vests who had sought refuge in the Burger King. These 
nine officers went on trial for three days in early February in Paris. 
The prosecutor delivered a firm indictment, requesting suspended 
sentences of six to twenty months, while defining their scope: "This 
trial is not a sweeping generalization, it is not a trial of the police 
with a capital P, it is a trial of individual acts committed by nine 
men." Phew! The institution is safe, even though the entire company 
stood in solidarity with these so-called rogue officers, protected by 
their leader who was merely called as a witness.

On February 11, the Court of Cassation upheld the dismissal of charges 
against the three gendarmes accused of having restrained Adama Traoré 
prone for several minutes and of failing to provide assistance to the 
young man who had collapsed in their vehicle and was left handcuffed 
until the firefighters arrived. It's worth recalling that the Adama 
Traoré case brought the issue of police violence in France to the 
forefront thanks to the "Truth and Justice for Adama" committee, led by 
his sister Assa. Following this, the family's lawyer filed a case with 
the European Court of Human Rights "to have France condemned." To be 
continued!

A police officer was given an eight-month suspended sentence for firing 
an LBD (less-lethal defense weapon) during a Parisian demonstration 
against the proposed pension reforms on January 9, 2020. The Paris 
Judicial Court found the officer guilty of "intentional violence with a 
weapon by a person in a position of public authority." The presiding 
judge nevertheless sought to justify this relatively lenient sentence, 
as the law provides for up to five years' imprisonment for such 
offenses. "The reports concerning Mr.[name omitted]were entirely 
laudatory," the magistrate noted, citing his good performance 
evaluations and lack of a criminal record. The court also decided not to 
impose the additional penalty of a ban on carrying a firearm, nor to 
record the sentence on the officer's criminal record, in order "not to 
hinder the continuation of his career." No further comment.

Sources: lemonde.fr and mediapart.fr
Viry-Châtillon case: the courts will exonerate the police officers who 
framed innocent people!
The police officers in charge of the investigation into the attack on 
their colleagues, who were severely burned in October 2016 in 
Viry-Châtillon, wrote false police reports, distorting the statements of 
several defendants as well as a key witness. This crime is punishable by 
fifteen years in prison. Under intense pressure, these officers were 
determined to deliver guilty parties: their falsifications played a 
significant role in the conviction of some young men, whose innocence 
was later recognized after years in prison. This is the case of F, 24, 
and D, 26, who spent four years and eighteen months in detention, 
respectively, before being definitively exonerated by the Paris juvenile 
court of appeals in April 2021. These methods could have remained 
secret. But since 2007, police custody has been filmed for criminal 
offenses. Having contested the official reports drawn up from these 
reports that is, the written transcripts of what was said during custody 
several lawyers were able to obtain access to the videos during the 
appeal trial, thereby discovering the police officers' practices and 
their cover-ups. Targeted by a judicial investigation opened for forgery 
of public documents, intentional violence, and fraud in court 
proceedings, with the aggravating circumstance that these offenses were 
committed by persons holding public authority, ten police officers were 
questioned as simple witnesses. Four others, the most implicated, were 
placed under the status of assisted witness following their 
interrogations. However, in October 2025, the magistrates announced the 
end of the investigation, giving the lawyers three months to submit 
their observations. Since none of the police officers have been formally 
charged during this investigation, barring any new developments in the 
case, the officers involved will not be tried.

Source: Mediapart.fr

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