Jose Bove, the radical French farmer convicted for ransacking a McDonald's fast-food restaurant, started his three month prison sentence today. He was applauded by supporters as he drove to prison at the head of a convoy of tractors.
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Jose Bove, the radical French farmer and anti-globalization leader,dressed as an inmate displays chains as he arrives at the Villeneuve les Maguelonne prison near Montpellier in the south of France. Bove was convicted of the ransacking of a McDonalds fast food restaurant in 1999.
Photo: REUTERS |
A long line of tractors, police and media vehicles rolled through the southern French countryside at a stately pace, ensuring Bove arrived some eight hours late for his morning appointment at a prison near Montpellier.
"I am a victim of politically-motivated justice," Bove, dressed as a convict and wearing handcuffs, told some 800 sympathisers gathered outside the prison.
"But continue the fight while I am behind bars," the media-savvy anti-globalisation activist added before passing through the gates to serve his sentence.
The walrus-moustachioed folk hero, who attends civil rights protests worldwide, exhausted the appeals process last year after being sentenced to three months jail in 1999 for attacking a half-built McDonald's in protest at U.S. trade policy.
But officials put off summoning him to prison until after the presidential and legislative election marathon that ended on Sunday with a landslide victory for the centre-right.
Just before leaving his home at dawn near Millau, where the McDonald's restaurant is located, Bove called his jail sentence "a monumental stupidity" and said it was not necessary.
Several tractors were decorated with banners supporting Bove's struggle to defend traditional French farm products against fast food.
"Bove to Prison - and Chirac?" one sign asked, referring to sleaze charges against conservative President Jacques Chirac, who was re-elected on May 5.
"When you see all this solidarity, all the people who've come from all around France, it's extraordinary," Bove said of the supporters accompanying him on the journey. "It is a struggle by citizens who refuse to be marginalised."
Bove has already spent 19 days in jail while under investigation and may serve only 40 more days if he behaves himself in prison, a spokesman for his Confederation Paysanne farmers' union said.