France: airport workers fired in anti-Muslim campaign

French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy justified the removal by the sous-préfet (deputy police chief) of the airport area, Jacques Lebrot, of security clearances for the 43 baggage handlers, all of whom are Muslims, in a speech delivered at the Sorbonne university on October 21. He said, “I can’t accept that people who have a radical outlook should work in an airport runway area. I prefer the risk of litigation because we have been too strict than having a tragedy on our hands because we have not been strict enough.”

He added that it was “his duty to make sure that they had neither close nor distant links with radical organisations.... Perhaps we made some mistakes...let them claim their rights in the courts.” This attitude indicates the intention of the French state to carry out victimisations at will in the name of the “war on terrorism.”

The arbitrary nature of the revocation of the workers’ security badges was underlined November 7 in regard to emergency rulings requested by eight Roissy workers being examined by a magistrate at the Bobigny tribunal. The lawyer acting for Sarkozy and the préfet, Georges Holleaux, announced that for two of the workers, “it has been decided to cancel the revocation of their badge.”

The judge has also to give a ruling on the request by seven workers for access to their police files and also on the issue of “the violation of the principle of the presumption of innocence.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/bagg-n11.shtml