The defendants’ bench remained empty on Tuesday, September 21, at the Bar-le-Duc courthouse. It is in an almost deserted courtroom that the president of the criminal court, Sylvain Roux, delivered his deliberation, three months after the trial for “destruction, degradation or deterioration of property by explosive substance”, “possession of substances or incendiary or explosive products in an organized gang ”, and“ organization of a demonstration on the public highway not subject to a prior declaration ”by seven opponents of the Cigeo landfill project, at a depth of 500 meters and by 2035, 85,000 m3 of radioactive waste in the small town of Bure (Meuse).
While around twenty CRS and heavily armed police were stationed in front of the courthouse, anti-nuclear activists gathered on Tuesday morning in front of the Nancy Court of Appeal (Meurthe-et-Moselle), giving the impression of anticipating the next judicial step. Six of the seven defendants (four men and three women aged 28 to 48) were sentenced. Sentences of twelve and nine months in prison were pronounced against two opponents, K. F. and F. L. M., already convicted in the past in other cases. Four other activists were sentenced to six to nine months suspended prison terms.
Co-president of the Bure Zone Libre association at the time of the incriminated facts and figure of the opposition to the geological disposal of nuclear waste project, J. D., 39, was sentenced to nine months in prison suspended sentence for having organized an illicit demonstration on August 15, 2017, during which clashes broke out between anti-nuclear activists and the police.
The “criminal association” not retained
On the other hand, the head of “criminal association” was not retained by the court. In June, at the end of the trial, the public prosecutor of Bar-le-Duc, Sofian Saboulard, returned at length to the “notion” of an organized gang, which “Is nothing other than the demonstration of a structured organization and premeditation of offenses”. The magistrate had requested a year in prison against one of the defendants, already imprisoned for seven months provisionally for having violated his judicial control, and sentences of ten to eighteen months of suspended detention for the other six activists.
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