Murder in Belleville

Wednesday

AT DAWN, UNDER ORDERS from the Paris prefect, uniformed police swept Notre-Dame de la Croix. They took Mustafa Hamid and the other nine hunger strikers to waiting SAMU vans, which carted them to nearby hospitals.

The prefect issued a statement saying that the raid had been ordered for humanitarian reasons after he’d heard alarming reports about the health of the hunger strikers from doctors attending them at the church. However, the acting director of Paris emergency medical services said the hunger strikers had been taking tea and water with sugar and vitamins.

“We were not consulted about evacuating them,” said a doctor who preferred to remain nameless. “The low ketone level tested in their urine was not considered life threatening, but characteristic for the body’s acid balance at such a stage.”

By afternoon no one had left the church. Seven of the hunger strikers had signed themselves out of the hospital. They returned to the church to applause from the others who’d vowed to take up the hunger strike in their place. Mustafa Hamid was among them.