French MPs vote to extend state of emergency, argue over detention centres
France's National Assembly has extended the country's state of emergency for six months in the wake of last week's massacre in Nice in which 84 people died. Although the government accepted the right-wing opposition's proposal to prolong the measure for six months instead of three, it refused to set up preventive detention centres for people suspected of terrorist sympathies.
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The state of emergency has been in place since the November Paris attacks, in which Islamist gunmen and bombers killed 130 people.
The extension would see the emergency measures, which give the police extra powers to carry out searches and place people under house arrest, remain in place until the end of January next year.
It will also allow police to search luggage and vehicles without prior approval from a prosecutor and seize data from computers and mobile phones.
The move, the fourth extension the state of emergency, now needs to be approved by France's upper house, the Senate.
Right calls for detention centres
The Socialist government has been heavily criticised from the right for its response to the series of terrorist attacks.
However, President François Hollande ruled out other measures proposed by opposition politicians - such as opening preventive detention centres.
During the debate Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused Republicans MP Laurent Wauquiez of opportunism after he claimed that the measure would have prevented terror attacks.
"The France that I lead will never set up centres where we lock individuals who are suspected in an undefined way, for an indefinite period," he declared.
Another Republicans MP, Guillaume Larrivé, told RFI on Wednesday that Valls's stance was a "legal, political and practical error".
"The rule of law is not the rule of weakness," he said, adding that there should be "restrictions of freedom for the enemies of freedom".
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