PRESIDENT NICOLAS Sarkozy's ruling UMP yesterday reacted with a good-cop-bad-cop routine to growing outrage over the brutal arrest and detention of a former director of Libérationnewspaper.
The police, who insulted the journalist in front of his children, handcuffed him and twice strip-searched him "followed standard procedure", said the ministers for the interior and justice.
However, UMP spokesman Frédéric Lefebvre issued a statement saying: "The treatment experienced by the executive from Libération, arrested in the framework of a press offence that is not punishable by imprisonment, seems surreal."
Vittorio de Filippis was the director of Libérationfrom June until December 2006. He continues to work as a journalist and is on the board of the newspaper.
De Filippis was woken by a knock at the door by three uniformed policemen at 6.40am on November 28th. "Get dressed you're coming with us," they told him.
"My eldest son, age 14, saw the whole thing. His brother, age 10, didn't leave the bedroom, but I later learned that he was very upset," de Filippis recounted on Libération's website.
"I told the cops there were other ways of behaving. Response, in front of my son: 'You, you're worse than scum!'"
Having lost two earlier lawsuits against Libération, Xavier Niel, the founder of the internet company Free, had filed a third lawsuit for defamation last year over the response of an internaut to an article about Niel, not the Libérationarticle itself.
Under French law, the director is responsible for everything published and investigating magistrate Muriel Josié issued a summons for de Filippis.
Police in Raincy, the suburb where the journalist lives, first took him to the commissariat, where he asked for a lawyer but was refused.
He was then handcuffed behind his back and transferred to the "holding pen" in the basement of the Paris Palais de Justice.
"They asked me to empty my pockets, then to undress," de Filippis recounted.
"I was in my underwear. They searched my clothes, then asked me to pull down my pants, turn around and cough three times."
The journalist obeyed and was locked in a cell.
When police ordered him to strip a second time, he said: "I told them I'd already been searched in a humiliating way and I refused to pull down my pants again.
"They understood how absurd it was, but they told me it was procedure," he added.
In the presence of Judge Josié, de Filippis again asked to see a lawyer, but to no avail.
He was charged and released five hours after his arrest. When he arrived at his newspaper office, his wrists still bore the trace of handcuffs.
Human rights and journalists associations, and politicians of both left and right have protested vociferously at de Filippis's treatment. Reporters Without Borders notes that France ranks 35th - after Mali - in terms of press freedom.
Most alarming, writes Michel Delean, the justice correspondent for Le Journal de Dimanche, in his blog: "If the police and justice system treat the former director of a national newspaper this way for a simple press offence, how do they behave with suspects, petty criminals and ordinary people every day, when no one is looking?"