• Thirteen people were arrested on Thursday in connection with the evacuation of the Zad du Lien, a road project under construction near Montpellier.

  • The infrastructure is particularly controversial: activists had settled on land to denounce this project, which they consider unnecessary and environmentally friendly.

  • "No impunity for those who attack the police and violate the law", indicated the prefect, Hugues Moutouh.

    For its part, Nous Sommes condemns "this massive and costly deployment of law enforcement agencies that would be more useful elsewhere".

An important gendarmerie device evacuated this Thursday morning the ZAD du Lien, in Grabels, near Montpellier (Hérault). The last link in this controversial road infrastructure, on which work has started, should link Saint-Gély-du-Fesc to the A750, at Bel Air. Activists had settled on land to denounce this project which they consider useless and ecocidal.

Thirteen people were arrested and taken into police custody for acts of violence against public officials without incapacity for work, installation in a meeting on the land of others without authorization in order to live there and opposition by violence or assault in the execution of public works, learned

20 Minutes

from the Montpellier prosecutor's office.

The gendarmes in particular discovered smoke, snowshoes, which would have been used the day before to throw projectiles at the police, oil cans and slings, indicates the prosecution.

These elements were "discovered arranged on barricades erected at the entrance to the occupied land".

A "massive and costly" deployment, denounces Nous Sommes

According to the Montpellier prosecutor's office, the evacuation comes in the context of complaints filed by several private owners and the municipality of Grabels, and after actions "aimed at putting pressure on the workers who had started the work as well as jets various projectiles in the direction of the "gendarmes" deployed to secure the site. "No impunity for those who attack the police and violate the law," said Hugues Moutouh, the prefect of Hérault, on Twitter.

We Are, represented on the municipal and metropolitan councils of Montpellier by Alenka Doulain (various left), condemns "this massive and costly deployment of law enforcement agencies which would be more useful elsewhere".

"We strongly condemn this approach, this disproportionate and costly violence for the taxpayer, already seen during recent evictions, which is beginning to be the rule on our territory", continues the movement, which speaks of a project "ecocide and climaticide of 'another century'.

A rally is scheduled for Saturday (11 a.m.) in front of the Hérault prefecture, in Montpellier, to demand that work on the Lien be stopped.

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  • Languedoc-Roussillon

  • Montpellier

  • Society

  • Zad

  • Works

  • Road

  • Gendarmerie