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Trial in Perpignan postponed: the mobilization continues!

January 25, 2011
/ By /
BDS France have issued a report following the recent trial of three BDS activists relating to demonstrations calling for a boycott of Israeli produce. French activists have been facing a state-sanctioned campaign of repression. Full report: We were over 300 people yesterday in front of the court in Perpignan in solidarity with Yasmina, Jeanne and Bernard, 3 activists of the group 66 "Peace and Justice in Palestine".

BDS France have issued a report following the recent trial of three BDS activists relating to demonstrations calling for a boycott of Israeli produce. French activists have been facing a state-sanctioned campaign of repression.

Full report:

We were over 300 people yesterday in front of the court in Perpignan in solidarity with Yasmina, Jeanne and Bernard, 3 activists of the group 66 "Peace and Justice in Palestine". They are prosecuted for a non-violent action in a Carrefour Supermarket on May 15th 2010.

The CRIF (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions) was claiming in its last press release its willingness to silence freedom of speech. It affirms "being maneuvering behind all charges against BDS activists ". This was made possible through lawyers of the BNVCA (National Office of Vigilance Against Antisemitism), Lawyers Without Borders (not the international NGO, but a pro-israeli office usurping its name) and the Alliance France-Israel. They are sueing antiracist, pacifists male and female activists calling for the boycott of products illegally labeled "Israel" while they are for the most part coming originally from the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

It should be remembered that all these draconian lawsuits would not have been implemented without the intervention of Michele Alliot-Marie, former French Minister for Justice, who aksed in an official document to all public prosecutors to show "firmness" against all these activists.

At the hearing yesterday, attorney Comte, one of the lawyers' of the 3 activists, invoked the prior question of constitutionality (QPC), a right for everyone prosecuted to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal to rule on the law invoked to pursue them. We argue that the laws used to trial BDS activists are violating our human rights, and our freedom of expression, and are unconstitutional.

This "QPC" question had already been raised at the trial of Sakina Arnaud, a BDS activist from Bordeaux. The question was rejected by the Court of Appeal and an appeal had been formed to seize the Supreme Court of Appeal.

The Court of Perpignan has decided to defer its proceeding pending the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Bordeaux case, since the activists are all prosecuted because of the same laws and on the same grounds, in order not to risk a legal conflict between decisions from different judiciary

The decision of the Supreme Court will certainly be known this summer and all the BDS trial should be postponed  until the Supreme Court gives its decision. The trial of Perpignan have been postponed to the 26th September 2011.

We remain more determined than ever to continue the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign, until the end of Israeli impunity: Boycott Israel Apartheid!
The BDS French Campaign
www.bdsfrance.org
campagnebdsfrance@yahoo.fr



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