How the Legal Team will work during the Camp
08.Jul.02 - The legal group has given itself two objectives:
- help about participants self-management on the camp in case of repression
- propose a legal workshop and discussions on knowledge and skill sharing regarding repression.
The legal team will be present in three ways at the camp:
1 - The fiollowing documentation will be available in French, German, English and some in Italian, Spanish and Arab..
-an active participant guide
-a refugees guide
-a short text about useful notices for the participants, you should keep with you.
2 - A fixed space on the camp where workshops and information will take place.
3 - A phone number you can call anytime in case of problems (only the legal group will call lawyers if needed), everyone should try to remember it by heart.
All informations about place, time, number of arrested people, conditions of their arrest, their eventual release, etc, will be useful to us.
Try to avoid non checked gossip. We wouldn't like to receive indirect testimony: if someone telling you something, tell him/her to call us directly.
Do not hesitate to communicate the legal group's phone number to anyone who could need it. An internet address can be used to send non urgent messages: repression accounts, testimony propositions. Watch out for calls we may make in case we need accounts from you in view of defences we'll have to follow up.
Working guidelines :
To manage the immediate follow up as well as possible of a repressed action, it would be really useful if groups preparing an action made sure that one participant stays with the legal group during the action.
- The legal group (not only the referent people) will carry on working after the camp to take in charge the legal follow up (court case), with the concrete and active political support of all the collectives and individuals involved in the camp.
That means a group of people will stay in Strasbourg after the camp. We'll also need to organise the financial solidarity.
- The legal team will remain in solidarity with any kind of repression against actions in relation with the camp (without making differences), and of the eventual repression on Strasbourg city barrios. In case of violence, intimidation attempts or police repression in Strasbourg city and suburbs, don't hesitate to contact us. We'll try to come up with concrete answers and ways of supporting the participants of the camp.
- Defence choices are, of course, political choices and it will be arrested people and those whom support them who will take those choices and will take in charge the public expression and its mobilisation, without delegating this role to lawyers or others. If no press release is proposed by the participants during an action, in case of arrest, we'll send a text in the name of the No Border network that will inform about the number of arrested people, arrest conditions and a call for their release and the pursuits . We'll never give, nowhere, a name of an arrested person and we are inviting all the participants of the camp to do so.
- At this camp, we are, in principle, against dealing the legal court way in case of internal troubles which, in the usual social context, are generally followed by suits. We are aware that this wish can bring up painful and hard debates, but if we aim for a radical critique of the cops, justice and prisons, it seems essential to us that the bertha group and all the participants of the camp wonder about the possibility of collective answers to those kinds of troubles and their prevention. This means of course, everyone has to take responsibility to put those collectives answers in practice.
- The legal group will work with lawyers 'commis d'office' (provided by the State) for the visits in detention (garde à vue) and to ask for the court cases delays and with a few involved lawyers in the legal group on the base of negotiated prices in advance to prepare defences. The legal group will try its best to take in charge the defences and court cases costs. If arrested people wish to have other lawyers, they will have to self manage the financial question.
Do not hesitate to get involved in the legal group, even on the camps' beginning and even if you haven't got any particular knowledge.
the Legal Team