French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended his tactics on law-and-order on Monday and pledged rapid police reinforcements after four nights of rioting in Paris.
Sarkozy, who also promised the parents of two teenagers whose deaths sparked the violence that they would learn "the full truth" about how their sons died, said the situation in some deprived areas had been deteriorating "for 30 years" and had to be tackled firmly.
More than 30 people were under arrest last night in the rundown northeastern district of Clichy-sous-Bois after some of the most violent clashes between riot police and mainly immigrant youths that the country has seen for some years.
Groups of youths have set cars and rubbish bins alight, hurled stones at police and fired at least one bullet in running battles that began on Thursday after Ziad, 17, and Banou, 15, were electrocuted in an electricity substation. On Sunday night a teargas grenade was fired into a mosque.
Visiting the nearby Seine-Saint-Denis police headquarters, Sarkozy maintained his hardline stance, saying policing would be stepped up to ensure every resident of France's poor immigrant estates -- where unemployment can be five times the national average -- had "the security they have a right to."
He said 17 companies of CRS riot police would be assigned permanently to difficult neighborhoods, along with seven mobile police squads. Plainclothes agents will be sent on to some estates to "identify gang leaders, traffickers and big shots," he added, promising a "national plan" to deal with delinquency by the end of the year.
Opposition politicians, human-rights groups and even some members of his own center-right UMP party have accused Sarkozy of being more interested in high-profile repression than long-term prevention.
They are also upset at his use of words such as rabble, yobs and louts, which they say is likely to stoke tensions further.
"This isn't how we resolve these problems," a former Socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius, said on French radio. "We need to act at the same time on crime prevention, education, housing, jobs ... and not play the cowboy."
But Sarkozy, citing statistics that show 30 police patrols are stoned and as many cars burned every night on France's low-income housing estates, is unrepentant.
So far, France's voters seem to back him: he is by far the most popular politician and is seen as a leading presidential candidate in 2007.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS