Lawyers denounce the use of house arrests to prevent certain activists from demonstrating on October 24

They denounce “an assimilation between terrorism and anti-fascism/radical ecology”. House arrests were imposed by the authorities to prevent certain suspected activists from demonstrating on Saturday October 24, lawyers and NGOs deplored on Sunday.

A person who participated in the demonstrations of October 17 and 24 in Belfort (Territoire de Belfort), who wishes to remain anonymous, received on Friday evening, after 10 p.m., a notification from the Ministry of the Interior requiring him in particular not to leave his village, from October 31 to November 1, 2026 inclusive. This document, consulted by AFP, which prohibits her from demonstrating and obliges her to report to the gendarmerie at 3 p.m. once a day, presents her as "close to the revolutionary movement".

Who are the targeted people? Aïnoha Pascual, lawyer at the Paris bar, who defends six people targeted, describes people "who, for the vast majority, have never been convicted or even placed in police custody": "We are talking about students, farmers to whom we attribute membership to radical ecology, to anti-fascist ideology who would have been present during other demonstrations".

These injunctions are justified by "the aim of preventing the commission of acts of terrorism", in the documents of which AFP was aware, confirming Mediapart. What those under house arrest are defending themselves from. These notifications "are all written in a bit the same way, mentioning the recent attack in Trappes, which makes us wonder what it has to do with this story", writes for AFP Raphaël Kempf, lawyer for the Paris bar who defends "an activist at the local level" in the Drôme.

For Aïnoha Pascual, the system of individual measures of administrative control and surveillance (Micas) “has been misused”. The government "is therefore seeking to legalize the practice of using Micas outside the current legal framework" echoes the AFP Me Mathilde Lanté, lawyer at the Marseille bar, who defends three people concerned. These measures are “only applicable to prevent terrorism, unlike assignments under a state of emergency which are applicable more widely”, says Aïnoha Pascual.

These house arrests "are often based on blank notes", i.e. documents from the intelligence services that do not reveal their sources, deplores Mathilde Lanté. “Their veracity is almost never contested by administrative judges, while we do not know under what conditions this information was obtained,” explains the lawyer.

Finally, the “people targeted thus find themselves deprived of any effective possibility of contesting the measure in time”, adds Mathilde Lanté. “We have courts that fail by refusing to organize a hearing within 48 hours” in these cases, she criticizes.

And "it is up to the person concerned to contest the decision, to prove that it is not 'dangerous': the classic judicial logic, already very repressive, where it is up to the State to prove guilt is therefore reversed and establishes a regime of permanent suspicion", concludes Mathilde Lanté. The Interior Ministry, asked by AFP to find out the number of such house arrests, did not respond.