French ministers face complaint over arrests, deportation of Kanak activists

Six Kanak pro-independence activists have filed a complaint against four current and former French ministers over their arrests and transfers from New Caledonia to prisons in mainland France during the territory’s 2024 unrest.

The complaint, filed with the petitions commission of France’s Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), names former prime minister Gabriel Attal and current Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, as well as former interior minister Gérald Darmanin and former justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, Radio France Internationale (RFI) reports.

The CJR is the only court in France that can try government ministers for acts carried out as part of their official duties.

The commission must now decide whether to pursue the complaint.

The four ministers are accused of arbitrary acts infringing individual liberty, aggravated abuse of authority and criminal conspiracy to prepare these offences.

“We decided to refer the matter to the CJR so that the full truth can be established concerning the arrest of the Kanak leaders of the FLNKS in June 2024,” lawyer François Saint-Pierre, who filed the complaint with eight other lawyers, told AFP.

“If the facts we are reporting are proven – and we have evidence of them – this is a matter of state that the courts will have to investigate,” Saint-Pierre said. “And the ministers responsible will have to answer for their actions.”

The complaint includes Christian Tein, a leading figure in New Caledonia’s pro-independence movement.

In June, investigating judges in Paris ordered the dismissal of charges against Tein and Kanak activists from the CCAT, the movement behind the 2024 mobilisation against plans to loosen restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral rolls. Prosecutors have appealed against the decision.

Lecornu, Attal, Darmanin and Dupond-Moretti took part in an inter-ministerial crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry on May 16, 2024, four days after the riots began. Journalists accompanying Darmanin for a documentary filmed the meeting.

“Two hundred arrests and not a single remand in custody – that is still a problem,” Darmanin said during the discussion.

“If there could be a few examples, that would be good,” Attal said.

All the CCAT leaders were arrested on June 19, 2024, and 11 activists were formally placed under investigation on June 22.

Seven were immediately flown to mainland France on military aircraft and placed in seven different prisons.

The complainants allege that the operation had been decided before any decision by investigating judges or the liberty and custody judge of the Nouméa court, and that it was carried out for political rather than judicial reasons.

“This operation was decided before any decision was made by the investigating judges or the liberty and custody judge of the Nouméa court (...) for reasons that were exclusively political rather than judicial: to neutralise the Kanak pro-independence leaders, particularly Christian Tein,” the complainants allege.

By Aghakazim Guliyev