The Paris public prosecutor’s office on Thursday announced it had opened a preliminary investigation after video footage was revealed of an off-duty senior official responsible for security at the French presidential office assaulting a young woman and a young man on the sidelines of a street demonstration in Paris on May 1st while he was dressed as a police officer.
The official, Alexandre Benalla, a one-time bodyguard and ministerial chauffeur, was placed in charge of security for Emmanuel Macron during his presidential election campaign and after Macron’s election was given a post within the close-knit presidential security team with responsibilities for Macron’s safety during official trips.
Benalla was officially on a day off at the time of the incident and was allowed to be in the in company of the police on May 1st as an observer only.
In the video published online by French daily Le Monde on Wednesday evening (see below), and in other footage subsequently posted on social media, Alexandre Benalla can be seen wearing a police helmet and armband. He grips the visibly distraught young woman around the neck and marches her to a position behind a group of riot police confronting demonstrators at the place de la Contrescarpe in the Latin Quarter of Paris. He is then seen grabbing hold of a young man who the riot police had dragged several metres along the street, before he then punches his victim.
The video, shot on a smartphone, shows Benalla quickly stepping away from the scene when he realises he has been filmed. The young man he assaulted remains kneeling on the ground, clearly in considerable pain.
The revelation that the Élysée Palace, the presidential office, was quickly made aware of Benalla’s extraordinary behaviour but only disciplined him with a fortnight’s suspension from his duties has caused a storm of political outrage from Left and Right.
The Paris public prosecution services said the investigation launched Thursday morning was into “violence by a person in charge of a public service mission”, “usurpation of responsibilities” and “usurpation of markings” reserved for police officials.
Amid the fast-growing scandal, the French president’s official spokesman, Bruno Roger-Petit, addressed the media on Thursday when he gave a brief account – and taking no questions – of the surprisingly lenient measures brought vagainst against Benalla after the May 1st events, and also confirmed that another person, an employee of Macron's LREM party with occasional duties at the Élysée Palace, also took part in the violence.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
“He was suspended for 15 days without pay,” Roger-Petit said of Benalla. “He was relieved of his duties of organising security during the president’s travel. This measure was to punish unacceptable behaviour and it was notified to him as a last warning before dismissal from his job. This punishment is the most severe ever taken against an official at the Élysée Palace.”
Roger-Petit referred to a second man present with Alexandre Benalla during the violent May 1st incidents, who he identified as Vincent Crase, a gendarmerie reservist and employee of Macron’s LREM party, and who Roger-Petit said had been on specific occasions called up for security duties by the presidential office’s “military command”. “Having overstepped his authorised role in the same manner as Alexandre Benalla, he was punished like him by being relieved of his duties without pay for 15 days,” said Roger-Petit. “All collaboration between him and the French presidency was also ended.”
The president’s spokesman added no further detail, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. These include why the two men were given such lenient punishment, and who had decided on their punishment. There is also the question of why, when he was informed of the violence committed by Benalla and Crase, did Macron’s cabinet chief Patrick Strzoda fail to inform the public prosecutor’s office with a view to prompting an official investigation. More generally, no explanation has been offered of how Benalla, who is not part of the official presidential security team, the GSPR, was involved in organising presidential security.
Barely an hour after Roger-Petit’s statement to the media, French justice minister Nicole Belloubet, speaking in parliament, said Benalla had accompanied police to the May 1st demonstrations “without being authorised, which obviously poses a difficulty”.
Questioned by Mediapart, the interior ministry said it had not been involved in Benalla’s presence at the demonstrations. “The agreement [to be present] was made between Mr Benalla and the Paris police prefecture,” said a ministry spokesperson, adding that the interior ministry did not oversee the authorisation of “all the observers who are very many”.
Macron was on an official trip to the Dordogne département (county) on Thursday, when he was filmed smiling and shaking hands with the public on a walkabout, and tried to dodge questions about the Benalla scandal from the media. But after he presented a new postage stamp with the latest choice of image for Marianne, the mythical female symbol of the French republic, he was asked if the Benalla revelations were a stain on the exemplary image Marianne represented. “The republic is immutable,” replied Macron.
When Benalla wanted weapons for Macron campaign
According to the accounts given by presidential cabinet chief Patrick Strzoda and Bruno Roger-Petit, Macron’s spokesman, Alexandre Benalla was suspended from his duties between May 4th 19th, after which he was given an administrative post in charge of security for events held within the Élysée Palace. Yet he was subsequently involved in security arrangements on at least two outside events.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
One was the ceremony led by Macron on July 1st for the reburial of Simone Veil, the late French champion of women’s rights and Holocaust survivor, at the Panthéon, the Paris secular mausoleum for many of France’s most distinguished figures. The other was when he was in charge of security for the World Cup-winning France football team’s celebration bus ride down the Champs-Élysées avenue this Monday, when Benalla was pictured inside the vehicle.
Details emerged on Thursday of previous positions held by Benalla, who at the time of the May 1st events held the official rank of deputy to Macron’s cabinet chief, Patrick Strzoda. In 2011, he was in charge of ensuring the security of the former head of France’s Socialist Party, Martine Aubry. He was subsequently a member of the security team surrounding François Hollande during the latter’s presidential election campaign in 2012. After Hollande’s election, he worked as a chauffeur for industry minister Arnaud Montebourg before he was fired for professional misconduct. “He had caused a traffic accident in my presence and wanted to run away, Montebourg told Le Monde.
At the end of 2016, shortly after Emmanuel Macron officially announced his bid for the presidency, officials of Macron’s En Marche ! movement, as it was then called, recruited Benalla as security chief for the campaigning candidate. He was given a short-term contract, beginning on December 5th 2016 and running until May 31st 2017, when the elections were over. Paid a monthly 3,500 euros, including bonuses, he was regularly close to Macron during campaign meetings around France.
On March 8th 2017, he set out an official cost estimate for the purchase of two pistols armed with plastic bullets, ten tear-gas firing guns, a Flash-Ball and shields used for crowd control. The detail of that estimate was contained in the so-called Macron Leaks, a vast online dump of confidential and also false data relating to the Macron campaign (see more here and here). The request, according to documents contained in the Macron Leaks, was met with astonishment by senior En March ! officials, including Cédric O, now advisor to President Macron on the digital economy and state holdings. Finally, it was Macron’s election campaign director, Jean-Marie Girier, now cabinet chief to interior minister Gérard Collomb, who dismissed Benalla’s request. “I have just learnt of a weapons order for the movement Girier wrote in an internal email message. “It is of course [obvious] that we are not going to buy weapons, or a Flash-Ball for the remaining 40 days [of the campaign].”
Also featured in the email correspondence is the name of Vincent Crase, who Macron’s spokesman revealed on Thursday was also present with Benalla during the violent scenes on May 1st. Crase was involved with En Marche ! throughout the presidential election campaign.
Meanwhile, police union officials on Thursday expressed their concerns over the little information made available by the Élysée Palace about the May 1st events. “For the moment, we’ve more questions than answers,” said Jean-Claude Delage, general secretary of the largest police officers’ union Alliance Police nationale. He expressed his astonishment that an Élysée Palace official should be present alongside police officers on the crowd control operations. “Who delivered the authorisation?” he asked, “Who provided a police armband and helmet?”
Another union, the CGT Police Île-de-France, representing officers in the Greater Paris Region, published an open letter to interior minister Gérard Collomb calling for him and the presidency to lead a “serious investigation” in order to “shed all light on the serious acts of violence which appear to have been committed by a close advisor to the [French] president”.
A police source, who asked for their name to be withheld, contacted by Mediapart underlined that anyone embedded with a police operation, whatever their position, is placed in the field under the authority of a ‘referent’ officer. During the events of May 1st it would appear that no-one intervened to stop the violence committed by Benalla.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse