Indictment of Three Anti-Semitic Policemen.

There is some concern in France as to some of her policemen’s ability to serve the republic. In Amiens (100 miles north of Paris) five persons, including three policemen, who are suspected of having expressed anti-Semitic ideas in a bar on the night of February 1, were indicted Saturday for “provoking racial hatred” and were released on their own recognizance.

According to Philippe Petitprez, the deputy public prosecutor in Amiens, the members of the group gave the Hitler salute several times, and shouted “Sieg Heil,” “Heil Hitler”, “Death to the Jews,” and “We’ve got to re-open the cremation ovens” in a pub in Amiens. One of the policemen, a sergeant in the Amiens anti-crime brigade (a sort of tactical squad or Red squad) also made the xenophobic statement that he rejected “letting his country be colonized by the spics and negroes,” the public prosecutor’s office stated. The sergeant and the manager of a company selling meat were also indicted for “acts of intimidation towards a victim” because they are suspected of having threatened the manager of the pub.

According to sources close to the investigation, the 39-year-old sergeant has campaigned for the extreme right National Front and his wife is Picardy regional councilor, elected on the National Front ticket. He is also a member of the Independent Professional Police Federation (FPIP), a small extreme-right trade union. The other suspects are a 40-year-old butcher, the 41-year-old manager of the meat company, and two policemen, aged 30 and 37, who, like the sergeant, have been suspended from duty since the case broke.

The five suspects were released on their own recognizance in accordance with the recommendation by the public prosecutor’s office. The deputy prosecutor explained that “it is not possible to remand a person into custody” on a charge of provoking racial hatred. The charge is punishable by a prison term of one year in prison. Moreover, on Saturday two young Frenchmen of North African origin lodged a complaint against Amiens policemen, including two of those involved in the pub case. A few hours after the events at the My Goodness pub, these policemen are suspected of having assaulted them in a discotheque. An investigation is being conducted to check the accusations of the plaintiffs, who say they “recognized the policemen in the newspaper [photo].”