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.
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