At around midday on 1 July, the police officers watching from a tent on the mountain observed the suspect cradle a sick kitten in his arms. “He’s called either Zig or Zag – there are two of them,” said Cédric Herrou, gently applying eye drops to the cat. “I’m not sure which this is.”
Herrou, a 38-year-old farmer, was kneeling beside a wooden shelter on a hillside in south-eastern France. Tents, caravans and rudimentary toilet blocks nestled among the nearby olive trees. At first sight, it could have been a hippyish holiday camp with Herrou – dressed in a purple T-shirt and jeans, with thinning hair, a ponytail and a packet of Natural American Spirit rolling tobacco poking out from his back pocket – as the manager. But the shelter’s pillars were covered in the hand-drawn flags of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. At a long table, a group of young Sudanese men were reciting French verbs. Then there were the police.
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