Posted on 11/08/2005 10:32:51 AM PST by SmithL
BOBIGNY, France -- "It wasn't me!" the 22-year-old insisted at his trial, three days after he was arrested during France's wave of rioting. The magistrate has heard the story countless times. The youths being rushed through the heavily guarded courtroom in the northeastern Paris suburb of Bobigny faced charges of vandalism or carrying explosive devices usually homemade gasoline bombs. Almost all said they were guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Human rights groups fear fast-track trials like the ones held in Bobigny this week could fuel a sense of injustice among the defendants, most of them French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants who already feel shunned by a country that promised them "liberty, equality, fraternity."
Bands of teenage boys in sweat shirts, hoods pulled low over their eyes, shuffled through metal detectors to sit in on the hearings of friends or relatives arrested in the riots that have rocked the suburbs of Paris for nearly two weeks and have spread across France.
Armed policemen in bulletproof jackets, tear gas and cuffs at the ready, warily patrolled the courtrooms and waiting hall of the fortress-like red-brick building where the unusual crowds have created an atmosphere of electric tension.
A police report read to the court said the 22-year-old reeked of gasoline and had traces of fuel on his hands when police caught him running from a fire. He insisted that two other people set the blaze in trash cans in the suburb of Pantin.
"I only came to Pantin to buy some cannabis,"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Part of the coverup
"concern"?
Puhlease.
Heck of a defense.
Slow trials for terrorists bring concern
Nobody's ever happy.
"I only came to Pantin to buy some cannabis,""
I thought islam forbade drug use. Oh well, I'm sure he can some in prison.
It is beyond me why after the first night or two the authorities did not impose a curfew. If they had, there would be no 'in the wrong place at the wrong time' excuse.
Sounds like another L.A. nightclub act has arrived.
They talk about "teenage boys" when in fact all but 8 arrested have been adults.
Do a Mayor Daley. In 1968, he issued orders to the police, "Shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim looters".
That should take care of the injustice in the courtroom. They show up maimed -- guilty of looting. They show up dead -- guilty of arson.
Their little terrorist manuals demand them to protest using every little hook of the host legal system.
This sounds like a typical Muslim threat .... 'If you resist my right to attack you, then I'll attack you even worse.' I love the fact that the judge who threw them into the slammer was a woman.
Oh man what if they rise up and riot hahaha boohahaha
riot or is roit in frenchy boo-ha-wa-haw-haw
Human rights groups
aka, the enemy
Headin' down the freeway, adjust the cruisin' power
The state-trooper clocked me at 90 miles an hour.
It wasn't me.
No, no sheriff,
it wasn't me.
Yeeaaaaa, must have been some other Buddy,
No, no sheriff,
it wasn't me.
"I met a German girl in England who was going to school in France.
Said we'd get to Mississippi
at an Alpha Kappa dance.
It wasn't me.
No, no babe, it wasn't me.
Aahhh, it must have been some other Buddy,
No, no child, it wasn't me.
looks guilty to me.
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