Charifa informed her employers, crying on the phone, that she would no longer be able to keep their baby for the next few weeks. On July 15, police officers showed up at her home, summoned to the police station, where the thirty-year-old, born in Algeria, living in France for eleven years, with no criminal record, learned that she was the subject of a Micas, an “individual administrative control and surveillance measure”. The Micas is an instrument established by the 2017 anti-terrorism law, directly inspired by the state of emergency. But in recent weeks, the Micas have been raining down, demonstrating a tense security climate on the eve of the Olympic Games.
155 prohibition measures were taken this month, according to the Ministry of the Interior, three times more than in July 2023. A tripling aimed at keeping away from the Olympic sites “people being followed, all close to the far-right, far-left and Islamist movements”, comments Place Beauvau, where it is noted that these prohibition measures are validated by the administrative courts when they are contested there. These Micas outrage lawyers, alarmed by such prohibitions suspending, without contradictory debate, the freedoms of movement of these individuals. This is evidenced by the story of Cherifa, ordered to report every morning at 8 o’clock to the police station in her town in Hauts-de-Seine, prohibited “from moving outside the territory of her town”. Her employers entrusted their child to her in a neighboring town, she can no longer work. If Cherifa is no longer allowed to leave her city of residence in the next three months, it is because, according to this text from the Ministry of the Interior, her TikTok account would have relayed, in March and April, pro-jihadist messages, from another account followed by 1,450 people. Her account would also have broadcast an image of a black flag with an index finger pointing to the sky, “symbols of the Daesh organization”.
The ban refers to the “framework of the Olympic Games”, as well as the “passage of the Olympic flame” in the town where she lives, events “exposed to a major risk of terrorist attack”, specifies the ministry’s order. Cherifa assures that her account was hacked, she disapproves of these messages of which she swears not to be the author. The young woman, a former employee of an Ephad, has never appeared suspicious of any connivance with the Islamist movement to her employers, who have been her employee for three years, who are flabbergasted, convinced of her probity. Fanny Velasco, a lawyer at Marie Dosé’s office, confirms that she has been dealing with an influx of Micas in recent days, receiving numerous calls from colleagues who are also overwhelmed.
“I remind you that Sana is a victim”
“It’s the security system of the Olympic Games, a very coercive system,” the lawyer complains. Who mentions the case of her client, Sana, a minor living in the north of France, who received a Micas on June 28, the third. A first Micas was imposed on her in January 2023, and renewed once. The young girl was taken, in 2014, by force, by her mother to join the Islamic State in Syria, where she was forced to enter into a religious marriage. Returning to France, the child was never charged, her expulsion order requested by the prefecture of the North was also suspended last October by the administrative court, she is accompanied by Child Welfare Services (ASE). The obligation to report every day and the ban on leaving her neighborhood oblige Me Velasco to request a safe conduct when the young girl has to go to her appointments with the ASE educators. “I remind you that Sana is a victim, she was kidnapped and forced by her mother; why prohibit her from moving around during the Olympic Games?” asks Mr. Velasco.
Among his files, the case of Denis, not his real name, living near Perpignan, who was convicted several years ago and served his sentence. At the end of May, Denis received a Micas, “it prevents him from fulfilling his obligations and I have to request a release so that he can honor his appointments at Pôle emploi”, says his lawyer Me Valesco. Louise Alvena Hubert, also a lawyer at the Paris bar, tells the story of a father of two little girls, a senior executive in a telecoms company, who received a Micas on July 16. The forty-year-old, a Salafist, with no criminal record, was notified that morning by the police ringing his home bell in Val-de-Marne that he would now have to report to the police station every day at noon. A schedule that made it impossible to carry out his professional activity. He is then given a map of his town, on which a line indicates the area in which he is required to remain strictly for the next three months. “This is a punishment for his entire family for the sole reason that this gentleman, who is perfectly integrated, practices a strict Orthodox religion,” complains his lawyer, who evokes in her client “a feeling of injustice and helplessness, a shame.”
This forty-year-old was preparing to enjoy a family vacation – tickets to Disneyland, a visit to his grandmother – leisure activities that are now forbidden to him. The Micas is given for three months, renewable, it does not have to support the elements at the origin of its decision, and no contradictory hearing, respectful of the rights of the defense, is provided for in this instrument relating to the state of emergency. “When we receive a Micas, we have eight days to issue observations via a letter to the ministry, we can request perimeter adjustments for example, explains Me Hubert, the ministry responds by email if it accepts or refuses, it does not motivate. Then, it is possible to refer to an administrative court, but their calendars are so congested that the hearings are delayed.” Securing the Olympic Games seems to authorize “an extrajudicial framework”, according to the confidence of a senior official of the Paris police prefecture.