The charges of terrorism are strongly rejected by the defendants. They denounce a political trial, a prosecution and a lack of evidence. In particular, they point to decontextualized remarks and the use of trivial facts (sports and digital practices, reading and listening to music...)[3]. For their part, the police acknowledged that by the end of the investigation - and ten months of intensive surveillance - no "precise project" had been identified[4].

The state has just been condemned for keeping the main defendant in solitary confinement for 16 months, from which he was only released after a 37-day hunger strike. A second complaint, awaiting trial, has been lodged against the repeated illegal strip-searches to which a defendant was subjected in pre-trial detention[5].

If those translations from DeepL are sufficiently accurate, at the very least, the main defendant was arrested has been held for 16 months.

As for the rationale, I suppose it's their relationship with the ‘far-left’ that have caught the police attention. There was a link to the French Wikipedia article on the arrests and the entire incident. From there, I gleaned that the ‘far-left’ relationship is with the YPG.

According to the Wikipedia article, there's still ongoing cases against the defendants.

I hope someone else who've got a better grasp of both the French langauge and the Rovaja/YPG situation give their two cents since I've got no idea.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@megane_kun the article by La Quadrature du Net actually has an english version: https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2023/06/05/criminalization-of-encryption-the-8-december-case/

@CynAq

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you very much for that link! I didn't even realize there's an English version of the article. Again, thank you!