The controversial technique of "girdling" will eventually been used in France until a new mode of interpellation is defined, said the head of the national police. The announcement of its abandonment by the French Interior minister Christophe Castaner had provoked the wrath of the police.

Read also Racism and police violence: in France, the urgent need to ease tensions

This technique of arrest, widely reported in the protests against the police violence of recent weeks, "will continue to be implemented with restraint and discernment," writes the director general of the national police (DGPN) Frederic Calves, in a memo seen by AFP.