France has had protests for several weeks. Everything began when President Emmanuel Macron suggested increasing the retirement age in his nation. He signed a measure into law raising the age from 62 to 64 despite the protests.
The arrest of a publishing company employee in the UK has caused new uproar in France and internationally. The man’s arrest has drawn criticism for being “chilling.”
On April 17, two unmarked police officers approached Ernest Moret, 28, in London’s St. Pancras International Station. Attending a book exhibition in the city was the foreign rights manager for French publisher Éditions la Fabrique. Sadly, he didn’t get very far.
After Moret resisted their requests for the passwords to his phone and computer, the police detained him. He was detained for six hours while authorities questioned him about his apparent involvement in the French protests.
One of Moret’s coworkers, Stella Magliani-Belkacem, attended the arrest. She informed The Guardian that the policemen identified themselves as counterterrorism police. Then, she claimed, they displayed a document to Moret and asserted their authority to question him over protests in France under “section 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000.”
Moret was held by police overnight before being freed on bail the following day. He was charged with hindering the police by withholding his passcodes.
In response to the incident, Verso Books and Éditions la Fabrique jointly released a statement. While they expressed their happiness that Moret had been released from detention, the statement also noted that his problems were not yet over. He has another appearance scheduled in front of the anti-terrorism unit in London in four weeks, and police have his things.
The counter-terrorism team is distinct, according to the firms, who claimed that the British police will “extract all the data” from Moret’s equipment and “exploit it.” It permits law enforcement to detain individuals “without any investigative leads [or] suspicious behavior,” and after questioning the putative suspects, they are subjected to “legal proceedings if they refuse to cooperate.”
The statement claimed that throughout the six hours of questioning, the police questioned Moret about his opinions of the president, the administration, the pandemic, and the names of authors who submit pieces to La Fabrique that are critical of the French government. Companies described the interrogation as “chilling.”
The arrest was described as “deeply concerning” by the writer’s organization Pen International in a statement to The Guardian.
