Paris (AFP)
Xavier Bertrand, candidate (ex-LR) declared for the presidential election of 2022, proposed Tuesday to modify the Constitution to be able to condemn to "automatic sentences" the attackers of police officers "at the end of a trial".
"I will ask the French to vote" in the fall of 2022 on a modification of the Constitution so that "when we attack a police officer, a gendarme, a firefighter, a mayor, there will be an automatic minimum prison sentence of one year not suitable for conversion, "said the president of Hauts-de-France on Europe 1.
With such a text, "there could not have been an acquittal" in the appeal trial of the violent assault of police officers in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne) in 2016, for which five young people were sentenced on Saturday to terms ranging from six to 18 years in prison and eight others acquitted.
The 13 were accused of having been part of the twenty hooded people who attacked two police cars with Molotov cocktails.
On his Facebook account, Mr. Bertrand then explained that "the automatic minimum sentence is simply the guarantee that when the person concerned is found guilty, and if and only if the trial finds him guilty, he is sentenced to a minimum prison sentence, without reprieve, without modification of the sentence possible ".
Mr. Bertrand also invoked with AFP a principle of "co-action" where, "from the moment when people are convinced of having participated in the action (...), you have a minimum sentence ".
"When you are engaged in a gang, a gathering that is guilty of violence, the penalties of some are worth the penalties of others," he said.
It remains "a sentence pronounced by a court, there is respect for the adversarial, a file, evidence", but according to him "it is the only way to break impunity" because "in this process of decivilization, he is important to mark a real stop ".
Mr. Bertrand insisted that with this proposal "we respect the fundamental principles of criminal law".
Thus "the individualization (of the sentence, Editor's note) remains", but "in such a way that it does not prevent the application of a mandatory minimum sentence", and for that "we need a change of the Constitution" , he added.
This proposal had strongly reacted the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, according to whom it would amount to "automatically send to prison any person arrested without proof or trial".
"No police officer, no magistrate will agree to substitute the principle of Justice for the logic of the raid," he said on Twitter - a reaction described as "unworthy" by the president of Hauts-de-France.
"Protect those who protect us, yes. Break our most fundamental rights, no", also reacted on Twitter the general delegate of En Marche Stanislas Guerini.
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