Anglet (AFP)
Opponents of the G7 summit on Sunday denounced the arrests of their militants by a "clearly oversized police device" that forced them to cancel the protests they had planned for the second day of the G7 Biarritz.
By Saturday night, the groups Alternatives-G7 and "G7 Ez" (No to the G7, Basque) had announced the cancellation of "peaceful gatherings" planned at seven different points in the region of Biarritz to "encircled" symbolically the G- 7.
Instead, they planned a mobilization in Anglet, a neighboring city of Biarritz, with a rally called the "popular wall". But even this meeting was finally canceled, the organizers considering that "the safety and integrity of the militants" were no longer guaranteed, with regard to "deployment of security forces" and arrest, at night , of one of theirs.
In front of the ocean, at the Chambre d'Amour beach in Anglet, the spokespersons of the G7 Ez and Alternatives G7 platforms justified these cancellations by the arrest of one of the "key members" of the organization, Joseba Alvarez.
The Spanish activist was reportedly arrested around one in the morning in Urrugne, according to platform spokesmen.
"During this check, it was realized that he was the subject of a French inadmissibility", confirmed later to AFP the prosecutor of the Republic of Bayonne, Samuel Vuelta-Simon. Joseba Alvarez, to whom "nothing else was reproached" was to be handed over to the Spanish authorities, assured the floor.
"This arrest is surreal, how a person who participated in all preparatory meetings, who participated in debates, organized peaceful rallies could be arrested like that, in a simple check where he discovered this inadmissibility" , rebelled Eñaut Arramendi, a member of G7 Ez. "We do not understand this response of the state, which puts oil on fire," commented the organizers, who did not exclude, for now, other mobilizations in the hours to come.
"Several dozen people have been arrested in Bayonne and Hendaye in recent days, including some of our associative activists," said Aurélie Trouvé, a member of ATTAC and spokesperson for the hexagonal platform Alternatives G7.
Saturday evening, the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques had indicated that during the day 68 people had been arrested, and 38 placed in custody, within the framework of the security device of the G7 of Biarritz, without specifying the place or the context of the arrests . Since then, about ten of these guards have been lifted.
© 2019 AFP