France's national assembly approved a package of 400 changes to the country's penal system on Wednesday despite a nationwide strike by lawyers who said the tough new anti-crime measures would erode liberties.
The bill, called Perben II after Minister of Justice Dominique Perben, doubles to four days the length of time suspects can be held for questioning and prevents many suspects from seeing a lawyer for 48 hours.
It allows police to pay their informers, break in to suspects' homes to install hidden microphones and cameras, infiltrate criminal gangs and incite crimes so as to advance their inquiries.
The bill also creates a legal status for informants who give evidence against their accomplices, and, in an attempt to speed up the notoriously slow French judicial system, introduces plea bargaining, allowing those who plead guilty to agree a more lenient sentence.
The government says the reforms are necessary to fight new forms of organized crime and boost the efficiency of the penal system.
Perben told members of parliament: "We have promised ... to give French justice and France the means to fight organized crime more effectively as it becomes more dangerous."
But lawyers, judges and the opposition say police and prosecutors' powers are being widened at the expense of justice and human rights. They worry, in particular, that plea bargaining would incite innocent people to say they are guilty to avoid a heavier sentence at trial.
Benoit Vernieres, a Parisian lawyer, said: "There is a real risk that moves intended for tackling organized crime could be used in less serious cases."
Several hundred lawyers, including the presidents of France's 181 bar associations, protested outside the National Assembly, waving banners reading: "Your rights are in peril", and "Perben, killer of freedoms."
Similar demonstrations took place around the country and most of France's 40,000 lawyers were on strike.
The opposition Socialist party said it was filing a formal objection to the bill with France's highest legal authority, the constitutional council.
Michel Benichou, the head of the national bar association, asked President Jacques Chirac not to promulgate the new law.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS