A French prosecutor has admitted that 17 minors spent a night without mattresses in cold, dirty cells at the Bobigny courthouse this week, after arrests tied to France's protest unrest, in a case testing how a democracy treats detained children.
The Seine-Saint-Denis bar association raised the alarm after four of its lawyers inspected the courthouse holding facility early on Wednesday. They found that the children, aged under 18, had been held overnight from Tuesday with no bedding, even though collective cells sat empty nearby.
