Three "yellow vests" were sentenced Friday to terms ranging from four to six months in prison by the judicial court of Tours, for having set fire to four radars and trying to set fire to a fifth between February 5 and 19. Among the five defendants, two women aged 22 and 50 and three men aged 20, 33 and 58, two were sentenced to six months in prison, one to four months in prison and the last two to three months in prison suspended. They were on trial immediately.
Four of these five "yellow vests" had admitted having set fire to four radars in the municipalities of Joué-lès-Tours, Chambray-lès-Tours and La Ville-aux-Dames, in Indre-et-Loire. The fifth had joined them on Wednesday, when they were arrested by gendarmes dropping tires and boxes at the bottom of a speed camera. A fire starter and a lighter were found in the two vehicles used to transport the group.
A political decision, say lawyers
At the end of the hearing, the defendants' lawyers regretted that their clients were judged in immediate appearance, even though, according to them, the hearings evoked a greater number of participants in the fires of the first four radars. "It's always political when we talk about" yellow vests ". Either we go into a preliminary investigation to catch everyone or we put everyone in immediate appearance for the headlines, to say: "This is what happens to you if you burn the radars", estimated Me Colin Verguet.
"The goal is not to get to the end of things, it's to be a spectacle," he insisted. "We are in a period of municipal elections, I think it is an attack on the state and the political context is playing out," added his colleague Me Emilie Vinqueur.
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