Several people are still in serious condition two days after the violent clashes that took place on Saturday during a demonstration against a mega-basin project in Deux-Sèvres.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered last Saturday in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, to oppose a project for mega-basins. Clashes erupted, injuring many police officers and demonstrators. Of these, three are still in serious condition.
• Three people in absolute emergency, one with a vital prognosis
There are three injured people hospitalized this Monday evening who are in absolute emergency according to the Niort prosecutor’s office. The first person is a 32-year-old man from Toulouse. Suffering from a head trauma, his vital prognosis is still engaged.
The second is a 19-year-old woman and the third person is a 27-year-old man.
Mickaël, a protester with serious neck injuries and whose mother testified to BFMTV, is now out of danger after undergoing brain surgery at the Poitiers University Hospital. Still in a coma, he is expected to wake up this Wednesday or Thursday.
• Controversy around the late intervention of relief
To these serious injuries are added all the other injuries – demonstrators as well as police – during this day on Saturday. Since then, the organizers have accused the authorities of having knowingly delayed the arrival of help to take care of the Toulouse victim and of being at the origin of the clashes.
The League for Human Rights claims to have noted “several cases of obstacles by the police to the intervention of relief”, including one in an area “totally calm for several tens of minutes”.
Accusations shared by Les Uprisings of the Earth, one of the organizers, which points to the government as “doubly at fault” for the critical condition of the protester still in a coma. “Between the time when (the victim) was injured (1.30 p.m.) and the time when the ambulance arrived (3.10 p.m.), 1 hour 40 minutes elapsed. The Samu helicopter took off at 5.10 p.m., i.e. 3.40 hours later” , assured the movement on Twitter on Saturday. And if the relief could not intervene earlier, it is because they have, according to them, been “obstructed by the police”.
• Ongoing investigations into emergency response
The police, for their part, “totally reject” this version of the facts. “As soon as they knew there was an injured person, they hired their gendarmerie doctor with a nurse under fire from the black bloc” assures a source close to the gendarmerie at BFMTV. The latter adds, however, that the terrain being difficult, it was complicated to precisely locate the victim, especially since it was located in a tense zone of clashes.
In addition, the emergency services would have received false calls, which would have made them lose time, trying to locate several injured people who did not exist.
The Deux-Sèvres prefecture assures BFMTV that “the emergency services intervened in extremely difficult conditions, while the clashes had not ceased and the police continued to be attacked”.
“They were hampered in their progress by the clashes which continued closer to the reserve reserve,” she continued.
The police were also criticized by Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecology – The Greens. The latter denounced the firing of grenades from quads in the direction of the wounded. Without responding directly to this accusation, the Ministry of the Interior recognized 436 tear gas canisters, 260 GM2L grenades (tear gas and deafening, Ed) as well as two LBD shots from quads.
In a press release published on Monday, the Niort prosecutor’s office indicates that it has instructed the Poitiers research section to carry out the investigations. These must make it possible to determine the state of health of the injured persons and the total incapacity for work resulting from the injuries. They must also make it possible to learn more about the circumstances in which these injuries occurred but also the circumstances in which the emergency services were able to take care of the injured concerned by the investigations.
