Raucous scenes as Air France 'shirt-ripping' trial opens

Cheers and jeers marked the start of the trial on Tuesday of 15 people over a confrontation in which Air France workers angry over planned layoffs left two executives with their shirts shredded.

The trial over the October 2015 incident, which made headlines worldwide, opened in a packed courtroom outside Paris with raucous scenes among backers of the defendants.

Five of the defendants are charged with "organised violence" and face up to three years in prison and a 45,000 euro ($51,000) fine if convicted in the two-day trial.

The other 10 face lesser charges over the confrontation, which arose from a dispute over plans to cut 2,900 jobs under a restructuring plan that the airline has since scrapped.

The court viewed a clip from footage of the incident in which a worker can be distinctly heard threatening human resources boss Xavier Broseta: "You've got millions, you're going to pay."

Union activists at the trial cheered as defence lawyer Lilia Mhissen took on six opposing lawyers representing the aviation giant.

Banging his gavel, the judge warned the defendants' backers: "No demonstrations, no protests or I will have the court cleared. This is not a show!"

But he was equally stern with the lawyers, ordering them "not to bicker".

The court deliberated over whether the union activists had the right to break down the gate of the perimeter fence at the company headquarters near Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport.

The defence argued that the gate was normally open, and that padlocking it on the day of the incident was a "provocation".

After crashing through the fence, dozens of workers broke into the conference room where management was unveiling the restructuring plan to the company's works committee.

As well as Broseta, another executive, director of long-haul operations Pierre Plissonnier, had his shirt and jacket torn in the incident.

Broseta fell to the ground at one point as he was trying to escape the mob, while guards employed by the company were also injured in the melee.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the defendants, whom he branded "rogues", should be given stiff sentences.

Air France's lawyer Dominique Mondoloni said Monday that the defence would seek to "transform the perpetrators (of the violence) into victims and the victims into perpetrators."

- The bigger picture -

Mhissen, the defendants' lawyer, said she hoped her clients would "not be judged on the basis of video clips that last a fraction of a second" but on the bigger picture.

At least two of them "clearly acted to protect Mr Broseta and Mr Plissonnier", she said.

"If they had retrieved all of the video images... the story would have been different."

Some Air France workers observed a strike on Tuesday in solidarity with the defendants, which the company said did not affect operations.

The hardline CGT trade union, which spearheaded sometimes violent protests earlier this year against France's controversial new labour law, led a rally of some 300 union members outside the courtroom.

One of them, Mahchid Modjaverian, said the trial amounted to "the criminalisation of union action".

"They can't take the right to protest from us," she told AFP. "It is engraved in the marble of the constitution."

Air France-KLM returned to profit last year after seven years of losses, but faces stiff competition from Asian and Gulf airlines as well as new, low-cost long-haul alternatives.

Air France, which employs around 55,000 people, still faces tensions with pilots and flight crews that staged strikes in late July.

The airline also faces a downturn in bookings, notably by Japanese, Chinese and American customers, because of the string of jihadist attacks that have hit France over the past 21 months.

evs-jto/gd/kjl