French Justice


France: No human rights

Among the worst prison conditions in Europe

One of the huge disadvantages of joining the EU is the European Arrest Warrant, EAW.  You can be dragged out of England, because of a misunderstanding, or French corruption, as is happening to David Noakes, and put into a French prison, amongst the worst in Europe.

The first you will know is when the English police turn up at your house to lock you up in a cell. You’ll later be transported to Westminster Magistrates Extradition Court; you’ll need a barrister and you may or may not be able to get bail. You probably have to put up thousands in bail money.


The only hope is that Westminster will block your extradition. You have eight procedural grounds to appeal on, and under the EAW, whether you are guilty or innocent has nothing to do with it.  You aren’t even allowed to plead your innocence: Westminster will ignore it.

However, one of the eight British conditions is human rights; Holland has already blocked extraditions to France because of the appalling state of the prisons.

If you’ve bought a house in France or are visiting, and they decide you are guilty of something, you don’t stand a chance.

You will be amongst 17,000 French prisoners denied bail and awaiting trial in prison; 25% of them attempt suicide because French prison conditions are so inhumane,"an eternal shame to France,” says Prison Doctor Veronique Vasseur in her book.

Utterly corrupt

You can spent 8 years awaiting trial. The language problem is insurmountable; you are likely to pay tens of thousands to a French lawyer, who you may find out too late is working for the other side.  In David’s  case the French prosecutors were OCLAESP, the utterly corrupt heath department of the Gendarmerie, who presented charges that were clearly perjury. And French judges listen to the prosecution; they don’t care about the defence.

They want to send him to prison for 10 years. There is no offset - he might do 18 years, and at 64, with squalor, rats, cockroaches, fist fights and daily homosexual rapes, there is no way he would survive. Doctor’s care can take 15 months to arrive, and we know a prisoner, also innocent, who has caught diarrheoa and vomiting from the food, and may never get rid of it. You may die, perfectly innocent.

In France you are automatically guilty; you have to prove your innocence. Meanwhile the French authorities often seize your bank accounts, auction off the tools of your trade, your cars, even the very house you live in. They have no compunction about putting you out in the street, penniless, with no methods of survival, to await trial. In the unlikely event you win the trial, you don’t get your house or any of the seized goods back.


Before you buy that dream house in France, you had better make sure you have no business interests in France, or England, or anywhere else. Like the USA, the  French have decided they own you all over the world.  If you have no businesses, that’s one major thing they cannot then misunderstand. And then tread very, very carefully, doing as little as possible.


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