Lavelanet. Two volunteer lawnmowers reject DNA samples

On Saturday 22 July, Alain Féliu and Jean-Charles Sutra, volunteer scywers, were interviewed at the Lavelanet gendarmerie, for a request for a DNA sample.
The two men were among 21 lawnmowers and lawnmowers who rendered jars of glyphosate unsaleable at large garden centers in Foix and Pamiers in 2016 and 2017. While they were acquitted at first instance in Foix, and the garden centers dropped their charges, the prosecution appealed the decision. And after being convicted by the Toulouse Court of Appeal, the Court of Cassation validated the sentence, condemning them definitively.
When they left the gendarmerie, Alain Féliu and Jean-Charles Sutra were surprised to have been summoned for a DNA sample, even though they had not carried out any illegal action since their judgment and were not suspected of anything. In this context, they questioned the prosecutor about the “reasons for this request” and want to know how many people in Ariège are in the same situation.
They evoke “judicial harassment”. “Justice knows very well that voluntary reapers act with an uncovered face and refuse DNA samples on a moral and political principle, and that to refuse is to commit a crime that can lead to a new trial”.
During the trial in Ariège, the defendants were acquitted, but the prosecution had appealed. The two inhabitants of the village of Olmes underline “that a trial has a social cost, a certain cost for the litigant”, and that in their case “it is moreover a matter of a congestion of the justice service which has more important cases to deal with”.
Those who define “endless judicial processes”, can only spur them “to continue actions against the dangers of pesticides, for healthy agriculture, on a human scale”. “At least there will be a real reason to go to trial.”