FRANCE:FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing allies yesterday sought to extract him from an institutional muddle after he appeared to challenge a decision of the country's highest legal body, the Constitutional Council.
Mr Sarkozy was widely accused of overstepping his presidential mandate and precipitating an institutional crisis by appearing to reject the council's decision to invalidate a key provision of a new justice law.
Mr Sarkozy called on the president of the Court of Cassation, France's supreme court, to give an opinion on the matter, a move unprecedented in French history. There is no mechanism whereby the court may review decisions by the council.
"You don't convict rapists by raping the institutions," said an editorial in Le Monde. "Can you imagine the president of the United States questioning a supreme court decision?" asked Bruno Thouzellier, the president of the magistrates' union.
The president's supporters said he was the victim of a "witch hunt" and a "lynch mob" by those who are "on the side of murderers". The legislation was introduced at Mr Sarkozy's behest in response to violent crimes last year. In August, a convicted paedophile kidnapped and raped a five-year-old boy. In November, a convicted rapist assaulted and stabbed to death a 23-year-old journalism student on a commuter train outside Paris.
The law will allow a commission of three magistrates, acting on expert advice, to indefinitely detain dangerous criminals for one-year renewable periods after they have completed their sentences.
On February 21st, the council nullified a provision allowing for the retroactive enforcement of "security detention".
Lawyers, human rights groups and the left have bitterly opposed the law, but the Constitutional Council "accepted the principle of detention for dangerousness", a former president of the council, Robert Badinter, noted. "A person will be locked up not for things he has done, but for things he might do . . . What has happened to the presumption of innocence, when one is presumed potentially guilty of a virtual crime? . . . We are in a dark period for our justice system."
The Constitutional Council invalidated only the clause which would have made the new law applicable to convicts released this year. It noted that article eight of the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights says laws may not be retroactive. The new law will apply to criminals who receive 15-year sentences from now on, in other words, from 2023.
On Friday, Mr Sarkozy's spokesman said: "The immediate application of security detention to criminals already convicted remains a legitimate objective for the protection of victims."
On Saturday, Mr Sarkozy spoke of "monsters turned loose" and said he had asked Judge Vincent Lamanda, the president of the Court of Cassation, for advice "because it is my duty to protect victims".
The speaker of the French National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, yesterday denounced an "artificial debate" and claimed Mr Sarkozy had never questioned the decision of the Constitutional Council.
Judge Lamanda, who is known for right-wing sympathies, tried to save Mr Sarkozy further embarrassment by accepting a "mission on repeat offenders".
But, an aide said, "it is out of the question for him to question a decision of the Constitutional Council, which applies in all jurisdictions, including the Court of Cassation".