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Summary

The French practitioner guide to the rights of an arrested protester in France — what to expect, what to say, what not to say, and how to assert rights during garde à vue and beyond.

Body

Le guide du manifestant arrêté is the French-language counterpart to the US NLG KYR card and the UK GBC pack: a practitioners’ guide to what happens to a protester after arrest, with explicit operational advice for the first hour in custody (garde à vue) when legal counsel may not yet be available [source: guide-manifestant-arrete]. Published by GISTI (Groupe d’information et de soutien aux immigré·e·s) and partners, the guide is jurisdiction-tagged French law (Code de procédure pénale, droits de la défense, contrôle d’identité, garde à vue), explicitly dated, and explicitly not legal advice [source: guide-manifestant-arrete].

Operational coverage: rights at the moment of arrest (the right to silence; the right to know the reason; the right to refuse a search of phone, vehicle, and personal effects absent a prosecutor’s order); rights during transport (the right to be informed of the charges; the right to ask for a doctor); rights during garde à vue (the right to a lawyer from the first hour — droit à l’avocat dès la première heure under the Code de procédure pénale; the right to have a person of your choice informed; the right to an interpreter; the right not to be questioned without counsel) [source: guide-manifestant-arrete]. The guide also covers what comes after: comparison with the parquet, presentation to the JLD (juge des libertés et de la détention), release conditions, and the role of GISTI’s support network.

The guide is a free PDF; license is not explicit. Reproduce by paraphrase, link to the source [source: guide-manifestant-arrete]. Not legal advice; French jurisdiction only.

Use it for

Pre-action briefing for French protesters; design of an arrestee-support line for a FR action; coordination with French solidarity networks.

Related

• boycotts-and-strikes
• buergerbegehren
• citizen-lobbying
• dilemma-actions
• escalation
• incidencia-politica
• methods-of-nonviolent-action
• noncooperation
• nonviolent-direct-action
• pillars-of-support
• structure-tests
• the-campaign-cycle
• the-tactic-star

Open Questions

• Confirm current edition date; the Code de procédure pénale’s garde-à-vue regime changed in 2011 and again under the 2020–2021 reforms.
• Identify the issuing organisation precisely (the lists flag the source as needs_human_review on origin); GISTI is the most likely publisher.