Paris (AFP)
The National Assembly adopted Thursday, at first reading, the bill "criminal responsibility and internal security" which modifies the legal regime of penal irresponsibility after the Sarah Halimi affair and regulates the use of drones by the forces of order.
The text carried by the Ministries of Justice and the Interior was voted by 34 votes in favor, eight against and six abstentions.
Subject to an accelerated procedure, it will be examined in session in the Senate, from October 18 to 20.
The flagship measures of the text aim to retouch the regime of criminal liability without returning to the sacrosanct principle summarized in the formula "we do not judge the fools".
The reform of criminal liability responds to a request in April from the Head of State after the strong emotion caused by the lack of trial in the case of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish sexagenarian killed by a neighbor, a cannabis user, plagued by a "delirious puff", according to psychiatric experts, and declared irresponsible.
Demonstration in front of the French Consulate in Los Angeles on April 25, 2021 to seek justice in the Sarah Halimi Apu case GOMES AFP / Archives
It is first of all a question of repressing the fact that a person has consumed psychoactive products, such as narcotics or alcohol, knowing that this could lead to violence or homicide for which he has been declared irresponsible.
Another exception "very limited" to criminal irresponsibility, unrelated to the Halimi case: when the abolition of discernment results from the close consumption of psychotropic drugs with the aim of committing an offense.
The text also provides for several security measures emphasizing the regal: violence against agents or their harshest repressed families, the fight against motorized rodeos or reinforced refusals to comply.
The executive returned to the charge to authorize the video recordings in the premises of police custody, as well as the drones and cameras on board the vehicles of the police.
Antoine Savignat (LR) deplored the "catch-all side" of the text but welcomed "number of positive advances" like the provisions on criminal liability.
Ugo Bernalicis (LFI) denounced a "nauseating medley" by pinning "security technologism".
On penal irresponsibility, it "only concerns academic cases which would not have changed anything at the end of the judgment of Sarah Halimi".
Modem Blandine Brocard regretted "the caricatured postures of the left opposition" and considered "essential to continue work on motorized rodeos".
© 2021 AFP