FRANCE TOLD TO PAY FOR TORTURING DRUG DEALER

France,a country that has proudly enshrined human rights since 1789, was
ordered by the European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday to pay the
equivalent of $100,000 to a convicted Dutch-Moroccan drug dealer for
violating his rights with police "torture" to make him confess.

France thus joined Turkey as the only two of the 41 member countries of the
Council of Europe to be found guilty of torture by a court sitting on
French territory in Strasbourg.

The court, established in 1959, found that Ahmed Selmouni, 57, had suffered
heavy blows over almost all of his body in "repeated and sustained
assaults" over at least four days of questioning by the police in the Paris
suburb of Bobigny in November 1991.