Sorbonne Occupiers Forcibly Removed by Police

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photo:  Agence-France Press

PARIS, 16 June 1968 (AFP)  A single red flag flies above the Sorbonne, now emptied of its occupiers. It is a banner that students had placed at the start of their occupation on the far end of a cross on top of the dome, around 30 metres (100 feet) high. 
This remaining flag could not be taken down. A fireman who tried said that with the light rain making the rooftops slippery, it would be dangerous to reach the cross. His bosses asked him to leave the last red flag.
At 8 pm police searches of the whole building were over. The last occupants of the Sorbonne had been discovered, a young couple found in a small lecture hall. The man and the woman, their bodies intertwined, were fast asleep. They had no idea police had entered the university and had to be woken up to be told the news. Totally dazed, they followed the police and were allowed to go free.
Police piled up in the courtyard the various objects they had found in their search of the lecture halls:
- hundreds of batons of all kinds -- various stakes, iron bars, small axes, chains, gas masks, dozens of helmets, rubbish bin lids;
- a few cans of petrol; 
- medicine from the infirmary;
- and also, of course, hundreds of leaflets.
No firearm was found.
The search operation was over. The police chiefs and their inspectors are still gathered in the courtyard but they should be leaving the Sorbonne soon.

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