Caught on tape: savage beating by militants close to France's Front National

TheyThey are shocking images that could have political repercussions for the head of France's far-right Front National party, Marine Le Pen. Mediapart has obtained copies of nine video clips that show the head of France's extreme-right Groupe Union Défense or GUD in Paris, Logan Djian, savagely beating one of his former GUD colleagues. The attack on October 9th, 2015, led Djian to be placed under formal investigation – one step short of charges – for “aggravated violence” against his victim, who ended up in hospital.

Djian has subsequently been released on bail of 25,000 euros and that is where Marine Le Pen's political problems may start. For Mediapart understands that investigators are examining where this 25,000 euro bail money came from, amid suggestions that it may have come from a company set up by a man called Axel Loustau. Loustau is the treasurer of Marine Le Pen's mini political party or 'micro party' called Jeanne, is head of the Front National (FN) in the Hauts-de-Seine area that covers west Paris and is also a regional councillor for the FN. He recently boasted of being listened to more by Marine Le Pen than others because of his track record as a businessman. Loustau told Mediapart that he had “absolutely nothing to do” with putting up bail money for Logan Djian.

The nine video clips obtained by Mediapart, which last for eight minutes in total, show acts that could be regarded as “inhuman or degrading treatment” as defined under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the prohibition of torture. These scenes depict humiliation and incredible violence, and Mediapart has decided to broadcast only very short extracts from the clips, removing any images that are degrading for the victim. The language, too, is very violent and full of expletives.

On the video clips one sees a young smartly-dressed man sitting on a sofa at his home. Five other people are there but only two are seen in the images: Logan Djian, head of the GUD in Paris, and another GUD activist Kleber Vidal, who appears furtively in the clips but who remains silent throughout and does not hit the victim. The person making the video identifies himself as Loïk Le Priol, another GUD member. He is a former soldier and rising star of the violent extreme right movement, and has recently launched his own clothing line, Babtou Solide Certifié, which is proving a hit with militants on the far right. As for the victim sitting on the sofa, he is also well-known in such circles: he is a former head of the GUD himself who later joined the Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ), the FN's youth wing. Mediapart is identifying him only as E.K.

The events shown in the clips took place in the early hours of October 9th, 2015. It is 1 a.m. and the first images show the group in the street where they appear to be 'rehearsing' the scene that is about to unfold. “There, we arrive, then we bring him in line, a little like I have done...” says Logan Djian, as the video cuts off. Ten minutes later there is a new clip, and the group are inside the victim's home. The young man himself seems to be in a state of trance. He has spent the start of the evening with Loïk Le Priol, as he states later in the clips.

Logan Djian lands a first blow on E.K. “There are five of us,” he warns him. “You spoke, you have to face up to that,” he says accusingly. Djian then suggests that E.K. gets up from the sofa for a “one against one” fight. The victim refuses and gets hit by a violent blow that knocks him to the floor:

The same accusation keeps being repeated: that E.K. has “said too much”. Loïk Le Priol in particular says: “You're going to pay for everything that you've said.” But what E.K. is accused of saying and to whom - whether the police, other right-wing activists or someone else - is not made clear in the video clips.

“We're not going to lynch you. It's one against one, you and me,” says Logan Djian. “But you know that you're ten times stronger than me,” objects the frightened young man. Loïk Le Priol, who is filming, interjects: “You're just a shit. You, a fascist idol? You, the head of GUD? But you're no one, look at yourself!” He continues: “Go on, get up, face up to it for once. Have some balls! You're a fucking Frenchman, act like it. You don't even dare get up. The little bit of French that you have in you hasn't even given you any balls.” Then Logan Djian intervenes once more: “Last chance to get up or we'll strip you naked,” he warns. Le Priol adds: “If you want to keep quiet in front of us, like Hammerskin [editor's note, a neo-Nazi skinhead group]...!”

In the images that follow E.K. is on the floor and Djian is forcing him to undress. “Either you take it off or we'll beat you,” says Djian. “Take off your jumper, you queer,” adds Le Priol. The victim is then dragged into his bedroom. “I beg you,” he cries.

In the darkness nothing can be seen on the clip but one can still hear what is happening. Djian and Le Priol start to undress the victim by force. “Stop!' he wails several times. “What goes around comes around,” replies Loïk Le Priol. “Stop playing the tart, stop playing the slut,” both aggressors tell the victim. “Get a move on you fucking arsehole, what are you waiting for to strip off, hurry up,” shouts Le Priol. Djian and Le Priol then ratchet up the pressure by counting down. “Nine, eight - hurry up - seven, six five four three, two, one...” The sounds of blows being struck can then be heard. “Hurry up, strip off,” orders Logan Djian. “Take off your shirt, take off your scarf.” Le Priol adds: “Hurry up or we're hang you with it, mother-fucker, we'll hang you with it!” More blows can be heard and the insults flow: “Move your arse you faggot!”

Here is the sound from that clip:

On the following video clip the victim is in the living room, on his knees and completely naked, his face bloody. Logan Djian threatens to circulate the humiliating video if he speaks about this episode. “Listen to me, this just remains between us, it won't do the rounds, not like the others...Now if we find information other than ours going around about this, the video will do the rounds and obviously you know what's going to happen.” The head of the GUD in Paris continues: “Now, if that hasn't taught you a lesson, we'll be back.” He then kicks him in the face and calls him a “little tart”.

“You know that I whacked more than one of the guys over there, you know that?” says former soldier Le Priol. “Cutting the throat, it's very quick, you know that?...Let go of my knife or I'll bend your hand over,” he says hitting the former head of GUD and threatening him with a knife at his throat. “Stop!” the terrified victim begs.

On the final video clip the young man is fully stretched out on his back. The attackers force him to get up and dance naked for around half a minute to the tune of 'Macarena'. “Move those little hands,” orders Logan Djian. Le Priol says: “The day you talk every second of this video will be put on YouTube, just for fun. Otherwise it will remain between us. It stays just with me. It's Loïk Le Priol who's got this video.” He adds: “What's more, you move well, like a little whore, as in fact you are.” The clip ends with those words.

The victim went to hospital and reported the attack the following day. His injuries were recorded by a unit of medical experts whose job it is to assess victims of crime. The young man mentioned the video in his official police statement but despite searches the judicial authorities were unable to locate a copy of it.

On October 14th, 2015, a number of people were arrested and two days later Paris prosecutors opened an official investigation into premeditated “aggravated violence”, using a weapon as part of a gang and causing someone to be unfit work for more than eight days. Among the five people targeted by investigators, two were placed under formal investigation and put into temporary custody; as Marianne magazine reported, these two were Logan Djian and Loïk Le Priol.

Then on November 3rd, 2015, a court ordered the pair's release, with bail set at 25,000 euros for each of them. Ten days later they were freed. However his bail conditions oblige Logan Djian to keep away from the Paris region and to stay at a residence in Dijon in eastern France.

When contacted by Mediapart Logan Djian, Loïk Le Priol and the victim all declined to comment on the attack and the video. However, Le Priol's lawyer Xavier Nogueras said he was “shocked and angry” about the publication of the video. “My client has asked me to take all legal steps to pursue this violation, especially as this video is not part of the proceedings.”

Questions over role of treasurer of Marine Le Pen's micro political party

In extreme-right circles the talk is that someone close to Marine Le Pen put up the 25,000 euros to free Logan Djian on bail: Axel Loustau. Loustau is the treasurer of the FN president's micro party Jeanne, a FN regional councillor who was recently promoted to be local secretary of the Hauts-de-Seine section of the party, covering the west of the Paris region. When contacted Axel Loustau insisted he had “absolutely nothing to do with that” and attacked what he called “a mixture of lies, conflated information and approximations”.

Mediapart understands, meanwhile, that investigators are indeed looking into the question of where Djian's bail money came from. A simultaneous payment of 25,000 euros from the company Financière AGOS to Jessica Guillemard, Logan Djian's partner, attracted their attention. This company was set up by Axel Loustau and his wife in 2007 as a family holding company originally called Financière SOGAX; it changed its name to Financière AGOS in May 2015. Axel Loustau has not featured in the company's statutes since the spring of 2015, but he has kept unofficial control of the organisation, whose chairmanship has been given to someone close to him.

Questioned by Mediapart Logan Djian did not deny the information about where the money came from, instead preferring to note that “Loustau no longer has anything to do with that” as he is no longer a shareholder in Financière AGOS. “How do you know all this? I don't want to speak about that, I've nothing to say to you,” he replied, before hanging up. When Mediapart called again Dijian was threatening. “Your muck-raking job, a whore of a job, I'm not replying to you, ok. Be very careful about all that you come out with, it's no threat, I'll take you to court. So be very careful you little shit...I treat whores like whores,” he said, amid a flurry of insults.

After this conversation one of the current writers received eight anonymous phone calls, that mixed bad jokes with threats. In one call the person at the other end of the line said: “We have your address”. Djian's partner Jessica Guillemard did not respond to requests for a comment.

Having become a company boss after years as an activist inside the GUD, Axel Loustau, now 45, created private security firm Vendôme Sécurité. This company hires activists from the extreme right and works a great deal, though not exclusively, for the Front National. In recent years, however, his never-denied involvement with the GUD, his placing under formal investigation over the affair of the FN's funding and other incidents have given him some bad publicity (see here, here and here). “We're radicals but we're also business people, you've lost us 40% of our business turnover,” Loustau complained to Mediapart last year.

To avoid his name damaging his business, a number of different companies run by people close to Loustau or by members of a network of former GUD activists were created, in particular Colisée Sécurité, which took over from Vendôme Sécurité. Indeed, Loustau insists today that he has “sold all [his] companies to devote [himself] 100% to politics”. However, according to documents at the commercial court seen by Mediapart it appears that Loustau's name is still involved with several companies. And he still maintains close links with Financière SOGAX.

This family holding firm – which is an acronym of his first name and people close to him – was officially registered at Axel Loustau's offices at Place Léon-Deubel in Paris's 16th arrondissement. In the spring of 2015 Loustau got rid of his shares in the company which was then re-named Financière AGOS, and a young woman called Emmanuelle Gaillard-Bailet became the new chairman of the company. She had been Loustau's secretary but was promoted to be the administrative head of his security group.

Mediapart contacted Emmanuelle Gaillard-Bailet at Axel Loustau's and Colisée Sécurité's offices at Place Léon-Deubel. Questioned about the payment of 25,000 euros by her company Financière AGOS, Gaillard-Bailet did not deny it, but immediately cut short the conversation, promising to call Mediapart back. She did not do so.

Until July 2014 the external auditor for Financière AGOS was another person close to this network of former GUD activists: Nicolas Crochet. He is an accountant who is close to Marine Le Pen and who has himself also been placed under investigation over the financing of the FN. His name appears as the auditor for several companies run by former GUD activists.

The Front National and the 'GUD connection'

The lines between the Front National and the extreme-right GUD have always been fluid. Today a number of former GUD activists are in Marine Le Pen's own entourage. These include Philippe Péninque, Le Pen's friend and official advisor who was a GUD leader; her old friend Frédéric Chatillon, a high-profile leader of the GUD in the 1990s who became the FN's main service provider through his communications agency Riwal; and Axel Loustau himself, who became treasurer of Le Pen's micro party Jeanne in 2012, taking over from another former GUD activist Olivier Duguet. As Mediapart has shown (see here and here), this group has control of the finances of Le Pen's micro party.

Certain people in the old GUD networks have also gone on to become FN candidates in elections. At the last regional elections, held late in 2015, the Front National's treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just – who was apparently close to the GUD “without being a member of it” - was head of the party's election list for the Paris region. In the Hauts-de-Seine département or county in the west of the Paris region Axel Loustau was third on his party's list and was elected after the person second on the list resigned. Other people close to this old GUD network who featured on FN election lists were: Loustau's mother, a candidate in the Hauts-de-Seine, and the party's number two in the Val-de-Marne département south-east of Paris, Gorete Varandas, who runs a company registered at the same address at Le Pen's micro party Jeanne, and whose name has appeared in the investigation into the FN's funding.

The so-called 'GUD connection' is led by Axel Loustau and Frédéric Chatillon and includes former activists from the extreme-right group who have became heads of small companies working, in part, for the Front National. Their radical background and the fact that some have been placed under formal investigation over FN financing has not been an obstacle to their rise. Axel Loustau has become head of the FN's business leader section and was recently promoted to be head of the FN in the Hauts-de-Seine. Loustau even recently boasted to Le Parisien that Marine le Pen listened to him “more than others ...not because I'm her pal but because of my ability as a business leader”.

Past and present generations of GUD activists show solidarity with each other. Axel Loustau and Frédéric Chatillon, for example, have employed Logan Djian in their companies Vendôme Sécurité and Riwal, both service providers for the FN. Djian appeared alongside the security detail during a trip by Marine Le Pen on January 7th, 2012 (see photo).

Djian's nickname is 'Duce' and his background and style seems at odds with Marine Le Pen's attempts to give the Front National a new and less aggressive image: he has a shaved head, a tattoo of the SS Charlemagne division of French volunteers in World War II, and a taste for fighting. Logan Djian is also the co-manager of a bar called the 'Crabe-Tambour' in the capital's 15th arrondissement which attracts French nationalists. He also set up a company called Securi Shop which provides security equipment and in 2015 organised with the GUD a national European congress that brought together different groups from across the continent such as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn from Greece and the neo-fascist CasaPound from Italy.

Djian has also been seen making the controversial quenelle salute with the eqully-controversial comedian Dieudonné (see photo above) and has been in the company of the youth nationalistic movement Jeunesses Nationalistes and the anti-Semitic group Œuvre française.

Few FN leaders dare to associate publicly with Logan Djian, with the exception of the Euro MP Bruno Gollnisch, who on June 18th, 2015, attended a debate and drinks at the 'Crabe-Tambour' (see photo above), and the MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen – Marine Le Pen's niece – who posed with Djian at a protest against single-sex marriages on October 5th, 2014, when the GUD Paris head was looking after security for the march (see photo on right).

In Paris the line between the GUD and the Front National youth wing the FNJ is even more fluid with young GUD supporters and members of the FNJ often drinking in the same bars in the 15th arrondissement. These links were demonstrated at the gala event to celebrate the Front National's 40th anniversary in December 2012. Mediapart has seen around ten photos that show young GUD and FNJ supporters posing together, sometimes even with Marion Maréchal-Le Pen and Julien Rochedy, who was the FNJ president (see photos below).
Julien Rochedy does not deny the close links. “Yes, they're friends,” he told Mediapart when asked about his ties with Logan Djian and Loïk Le Priol. He then spoke ironically about these “three or four individuals in France seriously and dangerously threatening democracy and the Republic”. In January this year the former head of the FNJ used his Twitter account to publicise the clothes being marketed by his “mate” Loïk Le Priol.

Julien Rochedy also moves in former GUD circles and was involved with Loustau and Chatillon in a political public relations company that he set up in January 2015: ASDALL-Ewing Com. This new business is now run by Axel Loustau himself. “The shareholders, they're friends who wanted to help me at the start, but in the end I left to do other projects. I left this company which had no business,” explains Rochedy.

ASDALL is registered at an address that is well known to the 'GUD connection': 34 boulevard Exelmans in the capital's 16th arrondissement. For also registered at this address is Axel Loustau's new company Les Presses de France, which provides services to the FN, as is Financière AGOS.

Marine Le Pen rejects the 'extreme right' label often given to the Front National and has carried out a series of high-profile expulsions of members judged too radical – to the point of ousting her own father Jean-Marie Le Pen from the party he founded. Yet she continues to tolerate this network of former GUD activists and has promoted one of its prominent figures, Axel Loustau. Marine Le Pen did not respond to Mediapart's requests for a comment, and nor did Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. Frédéric Chatillon also declined to comment. FN treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just, meanwhile, said that he had “never heard the name of Logan Djian”.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter