France .. Cartouche available to police facing protesters

Agencies - Abu Dhabi
The French State Council granted the security forces the right to use the controversial high-speed rubber-jet weapons to control the crowd in the weekly protests of the yellow jackets.

Friday's decision came from the highest administrative body a day before protesters took to the streets for the twelfth week in a row.

Some unions and demonstrators sought an urgent judgment on the use of these weapons following numerous injuries, some of them serious.

The Council noted the frequency of acts of violence and destruction of property during the protests, some of which deviated from approved methods or were not announced in advance.

He concluded that the use of arms by the authorities was not a "serious attack" on the freedom to demonstrate or the right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
The owners of the "yellow jackets" continue to demonstrate in Paris and a number of other French cities to protest the policies of the government of Emmanuel Macaron.

The yellow-jackets protests broke out last November following the government's decision to raise fuel prices, but developed into wider protests against economic problems in France.