A69 motorway project: Released after custody, activist Thomas Brail to go on trial in June

Thomas Brail was arrested for having prevented excavators from digging trenches in Vendine, on the route of the future A69 motorway. The founder of the national tree monitoring group who, in March, occupied plane trees for several days to denounce this road axis project between Castres and Toulouse, spent several hours in police custody before being released on Thursday morning. He then left the police station, with a summons for penal settlement scheduled for June 6, at the criminal court in Toulouse.

The activist, along with about fifteen other activists, carried out a punching action on Wednesday to prevent NGE construction machinery from approaching the alignment trees. “The law forbids them to dig more than thirty meters from these plane trees. Otherwise they risk destroying the roots and killing them”, explains a young woman present in Vendine.

Present on the spot this Wednesday, the gendarmerie agents negotiated for an hour with the occupants of the land, then deployed dozens of soldiers. The police then formed a cordon, before slowly advancing. This maneuver calmly drove the protesters to nearby ground a few meters from the site dedicated to the A69.