French judges revolt after being rapped by Sarkozy (News Feature)

By Clare Byrne Feb 9, 2011, 13:49 GMT

Paris - Finding themselves in the dock over a grisly murder case, disgruntled French judges have thrown down the gavel over the past week, paralysing the justice system in an open revolt against President Nicolas Sarkozy.

By Wednesday, nearly all French courts had suspended non-urgent hearings, causing more cases to pile up in a country already battling a significant backlog.

The situation was set to intensify Thursday, with judges threatening an all-out strike in protest over Sarkozy's incrimination of the judiciary over the murder of an 18-year-old waitress.

The Laetitia Perrais case, to which a horrified French public has been glued for weeks, has shone a light on serious dysfunctions in the justice system.

Two weeks after she went missing from her home in the western village of Pornic, near Nantes, the teenager's dismembered body was discovered in a pond last week.

The main suspect in the case is a convicted sex offender, who claims he accidentally knocked her down and threw her body in a river.

That Tony Meilhon, a 31-year-old delinquent with 13 convictions for a range of crimes, including rape, could have slipped past monitoring systems for repeat offenders, has galled many French, including Sarkozy.

Meilhon was supposed to - but did not - receive post-prison counselling on his release last year. His case, being considered 'non-priority' was thrown on a pile of 887 others by reintegration officials.

Sarkozy, who has a habitude of seizing on grisly murders to accuse the judiciary of being lax, vowed those responsible for letting him slipping out of view would pay.

'Whoever covered or allowed this offence (his release without counselling) will be punished, that's the rule,' he said, accusing both the police and judicial system of 'dysfunctions.'

In the usually tight-lipped world of judges the president's remark unleashed a torrent of frustration.

'Sometimes he reproaches us for putting too many people behind bars, sometimes not enough. And now he's accusing us of being responsible for crimes,' one anti-terrorist judge in Paris complained to Liberation newspaper.

The judges say they are doing the best they can with too few resources.

France has 9.1 judges for every 100,000 people, compared with a European average of 20.6. Their caseload is mounting as the conservative Sarkozy cracks down on crime. Each judge has about 100 cases on his desk at any one time.

At the same time the number of offenders under post-prison surveillance has jumped 39 per cent in five years.

The counsellors who were responsible for Meilhon's case had warned the government before Laetitia's murder they were swamped.

Sarkozy's critics accuse him of riding the emotiveness around isolated horrific crimes to push through an increasingly repressive approach and curry support among right-wing voters.

An opinion poll published last week showed only 24 per cent of French people supporting the president, ahead of elections in 2012.

The government, for its part, accused the judges of overreacting to his remarks and of being out of touch with the victims of crime.

With a showdown looming, Justice Minister Michel Mercier tried on Wednesday to defuse the situation.

'I simply want to remind judges that I understand their difficulties,' he said.

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