New Caledonia activists file complaint against French ministers over 2024 riots

The complaint includes Christian Tein, a leading figure in New Caledonia's pro-independence movement, and targets former prime minister Gabriel Attal and current Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, as well as Gérald Darmanin and Éric Dupond-Moretti.

It was filed with the petitions commission of France's Court of Justice of the Republic, or CJR, French investigative website Mediapart reported. The CJR is the only court that can try government ministers for acts carried out as part of their official duties.

The commission must now decide whether to pursue the complaint.

Case against ministers

Attal was prime minister at the time of the arrests, while Darmanin, Dupond-Moretti and Lecornu were respectively interior minister, justice minister and armed forces minister.

The four are accused of arbitrary acts infringing individual liberty, aggravated abuse of authority and criminal conspiracy to prepare these offences.

“We decided to refer the matter to the CJR so that the full truth can be established concerning the arrest of the Kanak leaders of the FLNKS in June 2024,” lawyer François Saint-Pierre, who filed the complaint with eight other lawyers, told French news agency AFP.

“If the facts we are reporting are proven – and we have evidence of them – this is a matter of state that the courts will have to investigate,” Saint-Pierre said. “And the ministers responsible will have to answer for their actions.”

In June, investigating judges in Paris ordered the dismissal of charges against Tein and Kanak activists from the CCAT (Field Action Coordination Cell), the movement behind the 2024 mobilisation against plans to loosen restrictions on New Caledonia's electoral rolls.

Prosecutors have appealed against the dismissal.

2024 crisis meeting

Lecornu, Attal, Darmanin and Dupond-Moretti all took part in an inter-ministerial crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry on 16 May 2024, four days after the riots began. The meeting was filmed by journalists accompanying Darmanin for a documentary.

“Two hundred arrests and not a single remand in custody – that is still a problem,” Darmanin said during the discussion.

“If there could be a few examples, that would be good,” Attal said.

All the CCAT leaders were arrested on 19 June 2024, and 11 activists were formally placed under investigation on 22 June.

Seven were immediately flown to mainland France on military aircraft and placed in seven different prisons.

“This operation was decided before any decision was made by the investigating judges or the liberty and custody judge of the Nouméa court (...) for reasons that were exclusively political rather than judicial: to neutralise the Kanak pro-independence leaders, particularly Christian Tein,” the complainants allege.

(with newswires)