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Anti-nuclear activist defies French travel ban

A French anti-nuclear activist on Tuesday defied a ban on him visiting a part of the country where he was arrested for biting a police officer's finger during a protest.

An anti-nuclear protest in Brussels last year
An anti-nuclear protest in Brussels last year Reuters/Francois Lenoir
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Florent, who has not given his family name to the media, on Monday marched into the Meuse department in eastern France, accompanied by several fellow anti-nuclear campaigners.

He was protesting against a "disproportionate, unjustified, aberrant" court ruling, he said.

The activist was banned from entering the Meuse for two years on top of a six-month prison sentence for biting a police officer who grabbed him from behind during the occupation of a wood earmarked to become a nuclear waste dump in July 2016.

Florent says he regrets an "unfortunate reflex action" but insists that the ban is part of a trend of judicial restrictions on the right to protest.

"Originally these measures [...] were basically associated with gangsterism and pimps, then it evolved, especially in the Paris suburbs, towards drug problems," commented Gérard Tcholakian of the left-wing magistrates' union SAF. "Now, in recent months, we have seen widespread bans aimed at social campaigners who have had relatively modest sentences but with an especially heavy sanction added."

Florent was protesting against the Cogéo project, a plan to bury France's most radioactive and longlasting nuclear waste 500 metres deep in what is now a wood.

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