The prosecution requested their placement under judicial supervision while awaiting their appearance, declared David Charmatz, during a press conference at the courthouse, in front of which around thirty farmers from the CR had gathered Friday morning.
From January 15 to 27, over six nights, 73 damages were committed on Enedis transformers, depriving 4,300 homes of electricity for damage estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 euros, the prosecutor said.
He stressed that these “abuses committed in parallel with the agricultural demonstrations” of the winter, “were not at all linked to the processions” of protest against the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement or the systematic slaughter of an entire herd when a case of contagious lumpy skin disease (LCD) is detected within it.
The investigators “absolutely did not imagine that these acts had a link with the farmers”, added Colonel Stéphane Dlongeville, head of operations for the Haute-Garonne gendarmerie group, during the same press briefing.
As part of an investigation opened at the start of the damage to the Enedis boxes, nighttime gendarmerie patrols made it possible to check six people, in two separate vehicles where there were notably yellow caps from the CR, in two sectors monitored on the same night of January 26 to 27.
“Their telephony made it possible to confirm their presence on six journeys during six nights in January” at the scene of the abuses, said the prosecutor.
Of the six men arrested on Wednesday and placed in police custody, three admitted the facts and named the departmental president of the CR, who was also placed in police custody on Wednesday evening, added Mr. Charmatz.
The four suspects, aged 35 to 45, are being prosecuted for damage to public property during a meeting, theft during a meeting of padlocks and keys (metal parts of the transformer). They face up to seven years in prison and a fine of 3,500 euros per damaged transformer.
Among the farmers gathered in front of the court, yellow caps on their heads, Lionel Candelon, member of the CR management and president of the Gers Chamber of Agriculture, judged the judicial response “completely disproportionate”.
“It’s a manhunt,” he told AFP, “clearly, there is a determination on the part of high authorities, whether the regional prefect or the Toulouse prosecutor, to break the yellow cap.”
Dominique Raud, a breeder from Haute-Garonne, denounced “the police pressure” which is increasingly falling on the CR and preventing “our demands from being heard”.
The four suspects are, however, not worried by the investigation into the cutting of a roadside tree and left on the public highway, causing two accidents on January 15, said the prosecutor, announcing the continuation of this second investigation.
© 2026 AFP
date: 2026-02-13 17:10:00
Keep reading