MONTPELLIER, France, June 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Police roused France's anti-globalization hero Jose Bove from his bed at dawn on Sunday, June 22, and whisked him away to prison to begin a 10-month sentence for helping destroy genetically modified crops, police said.

They said a helicopter airlifted Bove, the controversial figurehead of France's farmers' union, the Peasant's Confederation, from his farm at Millau in southern France straight to a prison near Montpellier.

"We picked him up as he slept," one police officer told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "That surprised him. He didn't look triumphant."

The raid was so unexpected that authorities at the Villeneuve-les-Maguelone prison were not forewarned, one of the guards told AFP.

Within 40 minutes of his arrest, Bove was behind bars and a cordon of French riot police was in place around the prison.

His incarceration, five months after his sentence was confirmed by judges, sparked immediate protests from politicians, unions and his supporters and calls for a presidential pardon.

The League of Human Rights condemned the "brutal" incarceration carried out "with disproportionate means," which Bove's lawyer Francois Roux labeled as a "commando operation."

"They broke down the door. He was carted off like a crook without time to even pack his personal affairs -- not even a toothbrush!" said Roux, who had been denied access to the house by police.

But Justice Minister Dominique Perben defended the measures at a news conference, saying the surprise raid was necessary in order to avoid confrontation with Bove supporters.

"Jose Bove had made it know that his friends would make obstacles to his transfer," Perben said.

Perben said that it "was not impossible that Jose Bove could benefit from a (presidential) pardon on July 14," France's national day, and that he would inform French President Jacques Chirac of his opinion on the matter within days.

But Perben said that Bove had affirmed "his willingness not to cooperate" and had "closed the way for an adjustment" of the sentence.

Bove had refused any changes to his sentence and had been holed up on his farm for several days, waiting for either a pardon or his arrest.

He has become a standard bearer of the movement against economic imperialism and his incarceration is likely to boost his popularity among opponents of globalization.

The mustachioed 49-year-old sheep farmer has become increasingly known around the world for his protests, which have targeted junk food, U.S. trade tariffs and the risks to the environment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

He spent a month and a half behind bars last year for taking part in the demolition of a half-built McDonald's restaurant in Millau in 1999.

The 10-month sentence he began serving on Sunday was the accumulation of two convictions -- four months for destroying a stock of GM seeds at a site in France owned by Swiss biotech giant Novartis in 1998 and six months for ruining GM rice plants at a laboratory in Montpellier in 1999.

The sudden police raid sparked a spontaneous protest outside Millau police station, where around 50 of Bove's supporters set a hedge on fire and hung up a banner says "GMOs - stop crackdowns on unions". Another demonstration was planned to take place outside the Villeneuve-les-Maguelone prison at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).

His Peasant's Confederation reacted by urging opponents of GM crops to protest across France.

"I urge all citizens who oppose GMOs to demonstrate noisily outside all the jails in France and all fields where GMOs are being tested," the union's regional spokesman Dominique Soullie told reporters outside the prison.

He said it was unacceptable for Bove to have been jailed for upholding the interests of the Peasant's Confederation and condemned the police's heavy handed approach, a complaint echoed by the country's largest students' union and the leader of the Communist group in the national parliament.

"This is shameful," Communist parliamentary party leader Alain Bouquet told AFP. "The criminalization of militants and union officials has risen to unacceptable levels."

The French National Students' Union issued a statement saying Bove's incarceration "smacks of an unacceptable crackdown on union activity".

Bove has become the darling of the anti-globalization movement and has traveled the world lecturing on the evils of globalization and genetically-modified crops and has earned the nickname 'Asterix' -- after a French comic strip character -- for his determination to repel alien invaders in the form of foreign capitalist concerns.

Bove was also one of more than 40 pacifists - mainly French but also a number of Italians, Britons, Swiss and Americans - who brazened their way in April 2002 past Israeli occupation troops and made their way into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters besieged by Israelis.

Eleven who came out later, including Bove, were arrested and slated for expulsion, Israeli officials said.