Europe Police Violence Unpunished

Police brutality is rarely punished in France and the government has failed so utterly to tackle law enforcement abuses that officers benefit from an "effective impunity", Amnesty International said in a damning report released yesterday.

The 70-page report, France: The Search for Justice, is based on 30 cases of unpunished police violence which Amnesty followed closely between 1991 and 2005.

They reveal "a pattern of government ministers, judges and senior police allowing officers to use excessive and sometimes lethal force against suspects, without fear of serious repercussions", Amnesty said.

Racism appeared to be a major element in almost all the cases: all but one involved victims of Arab or African origin. Complaints of police violence in France had risen by 18.7% in 2004, the seventh consecutive increase.

"What we are saying is that French police brutality exists, and that the French authorities do little or nothing about it," said Geneviève Sevrin, president of Amnesty France.

In one typical case Virginie Houset, the widow of Sydney Manoka Nzeza, a young amateur boxer of Zairian origin who died of suffocation in police custody, said only two of the six policemen involved in her husband's arrest were convicted, bothof manslaughter, and sentenced to suspended seven-month sentences.

"How can anyone say France is a democratic country?" Ms Houset said."Are men really born free here and equal before the law?" Jon Henley, Paris