A French court has sentenced a 28-year-old man to four months in prison for slapping French president Emmanuel Macron in the face, reports The Guardian.
Damien Tarel was quickly arrested after the swipe that caught Macron’s left cheek with an audible thwack on Tuesday, as the French leader was greeting a crowd.
The court in the south-east city of Valence convicted Tarel on Thursday on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority. He was given four months in prison and an additional 14-month suspended sentence, and was banned from ever holding public office and from owning weapons for five years.
Tarel described himself as a rightwing or extreme-right “patriot” and member of the gilets jaunes economic protest movement. He shouted a centuries-old royalist war cry as he hit the president.
After the incident, Tarel acknowledged hitting the president with a “rather violent” slap. “When I saw his friendly, lying look, I felt disgust, and I had a violent reaction,” he told the court. “It was an impulsive reaction … I was surprised myself by the violence.”
He said he and his friends had considered bringing an egg or a cream pie to throw at the president, but had dropped the idea – and insisted that the slap wasn’t premeditated.
“I think that Emmanuel Macron represents the decline of our country,” he said, without explaining what he meant.
Tarel told the court that he supported the yellow vests economic protest movement that shook Macron’s presidency in 2019. He told investigators that he held Right or ultra-right political convictions without being a member of a party or group, according to the prosecutor’s office.