AFP
Private planes: police custody of Attac and XR activists lifted after an action in Le Bourget
Twelve Attac and Extinction Rebellion activists, who had blocked access to a terminal at Le Bourget business airport near Paris on Friday, have been released from police custody and the investigation continues, the Bobigny prosecutor’s office said. “The custody was lifted overnight from Saturday to Sunday,” the prosecution said. The activists were heard at the police station in La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis) for participation in a demonstration without authorization, participation in a regrouping after a warning and, for some of them, material damage in a meeting. “The investigation continues in preliminary because ADP (Aéroports de Paris, editor’s note) has not yet been able to quantify its damage,” added the prosecution, specifying that the video surveillance images remained to be exploited. On Friday, a score of activists, some in white coats, positioned themselves to block access to a terminal. Four activists had also climbed on a canopy over the access road to the terminal. They were arrested by the police. “Private jets are the symbol of a way of life that is destroying the planet,” Annick Coupé, spokeswoman for the Attac association, said at the event. We must “tax kerosene and ban private jets,” said a spokesman for Extinction Rebellion, speaking under the pseudonym “Chalou.” The action had no impact on flights, according to ADP, manager of Le Bourget, presented as the leading business airport in Europe. A jet can emit in five hours the amount of CO2 that an average French person emits for an entire year, according to a study by the specialized NGO Transport & Environment published in May 2021. Also on Saturday, Attac activists blocked the dock for an hour of the multi-millionaires of the marina of Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) to once again denounce there the “climate criminals” who constitute in their eyes the “ultra-rich”. fan/pga/bow