After a visit and an alarming report on the state of police custody cells, delivered in December, the bar association attacked the Ministry of the Interior regarding the unworthy conditions of detention in two police stations in the 2nd city of France. The administrative court rendered its verdict and ruled at the expense of the State.
2 mins
with our correspondent in Marseille, Ariane Lavrilleux
At the bar, the lawyers marched to denounce unsanitary cells, too small, with unbearable urine odors, without ventilation, where 10,000 people are locked up each year. Like Yehya who spent three days in the police station in the north of the city: “ I spent 72 hours in a jail with two people, without a mattress. Three people alternately sleeping on the bench. A cell where there were a lot of ants, a lot of dirt and food on the floor. It was not cleaned in the 72 hours I was in it. The jailers were pretty cool with me. I don’t want to spit on them. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I went. Hygiene on the other hand, it was catastrophic “.
The verdict of the Marseille administrative court
The Marseille administrative court orders the Ministry of the Interior to provide mattresses to those in police custody and to clean the police custody cells of the two Marseille police stations targeted by the complaint within a month, under penalty of a fine. of €250 per day not respected.
The court also orders the state to renovate and carry out work within three months. The State will also have to pay a fine of 1,500 euros to the bar association which took him to court and documented the unsanitary conditions in Marseille jails.
The lawyers are demanding at least mattresses and immediate renovation work. “ How can we imagine that a person placed in these conditions could correctly answer the questions asked of him afterwards? At this level and during periods of police custody which can still be long, which can last 96 hours, this is inhumane, degrading treatment. I find that we are not very far from torture in reality », deplores Valentin Loret of the Human Rights League.
The Bouches du Rhône prefecture recognizes cleanliness problems, but ensures that work and quotes are underway to renovate the buildings.
Several similar procedures take place in France. In Nice, last week on January 17, 2024, the court ordered the State for the second time to rehabilitate its police custody cells.