Outcry as police question children

POLICE in the Gironde have been criticised after they questioned children aged six and ten for two hours on suspicion of having stolen bicycles.

The boys were taken into the station for questioning after police saw them leaving their school in Floirac on bikes.

The mother of the ten-year-old has said she will be writing to Education Minister Xavier Darcos to complain.

UMP Party spokesman Frédéric Lefebvre said: “It is not acceptable for a six-year-old child suspected of stealing a bike to be arrested outside school.”

The party has called for an inquiry to be held into the circumstances and why the boys’ parents were not warned. Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie has also said an inquiry should be held.

The director of public security for the department of the Gironde said a complaint had been lodged and the police would have to account for what they did.

The police acted after a woman told them she recognised the bikes as ones stolen from her family. The mother of the ten-year-old has since provided a sworn statement from an officer at an air base that he gave the bike to her child. The six-year-old said he borrowed his.

The incident comes as Mr Darcos has said it may be necessary to create a mobile force with powers to enter schools in order to prevent violence – notably to search children suspected of carrying knives and to confiscate any weapons they find. The comments follow the stabbing of a teacher in a collège in Haute-Garonne.

Photo: Jonas Roux