On Monday, the administrative justice must study two requests for interim relief against a possible file of the Lille prosecutor's office, denounced by Mediapart, which would have identified personal data of people arrested during the demonstrations against the pension reform, we learned from the applicants and the court.

These requests for interim release, which are based solely on the investigation of Mediapart, will be examined at a hearing at 10:30 am at the administrative court of Lille, said the jurisdiction to AFP. One was drafted by the Association for the Defence of Constitutional Liberties (Adelico) and the Union of Lawyers of France, represented by Jean-Baptiste Soufron, the other by the League of Human Rights (LDH).

"Dedicated tools to monitor and process procedures"

According to the Mediapart article, "in at least two major judicial courts", including Lille, "the duty substitutes" filled in "Excel tables with the surname, first name and date of birth of each protester in custody" in the context of the demonstrations, "as well as the criminal consequences given". These files not declared to the competent authorities were "then to be transmitted to the prosecutor general of the Court of Appeal," says the online media.

Questioned by Mediapart, the Ministry of Justice had acknowledged that "local initiatives" had "led to the establishment of dedicated tools to monitor and process procedures", without formally mentioning "files".

In the first application, the associations consider that such a practice "within the Lille prosecutor's office" infringes the "fundamental freedoms to demonstrate, come and go as well as the right to privacy". They ask the court to "put an end" to these "serious and manifestly unlawful violations".

It is "a clandestine file that has never been authorized," Marion Ogier, a lawyer for the LDH, told AFP. "There is no legal framework and no guarantees," she said. Contacted by AFP, the Lille prosecutor's office and the prosecutor general did not respond.

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