A friend and associate of French prime minister Édouard Philippe arrested for hitting a policeman was later released from police custody at Rouen in northern France after claiming he was the premier's diplomatic advisor and needed to attend an official visit by Russian prime minster Dmitry Medvedev to nearby Le Havre a few hours later, Mediapart can reveal. The French prime minister's office, however, quickly dismissed the claim that Khalid Bouksib was a “diplomatic and communications advisor” even though it did not deny his closeness to Philippe.
Khalid Bouksib was arrested on the evening of Sunday 23rd June at Darnétal on the outskirts of Rouen following a confrontation with an off-duty officer from national police unit the Compagnie de Sécurité Sépublicaine or CRS, inside a private residential compound where the officer – who was not in uniform at the time of the incident - lives. Bouksib was placed in custody for allegedly “assaulting a person in authority”. He will now stand trial in Rouen on November 18th 2019 for the assault, criminal damage and passing himself off as a ministerial advisor.
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The incident had started when the officer returned to his home at around 7.30pm on that Sunday planning to watch the women's football World Cup match between France and Brazil, which was being played at Le Havre. The private Gustave-Flaubert residential compound in which he lives, and where there have been incidents of criminal damage in recent months, is protected by an automatic entrance gate.
According to several sources, a man who was unknown to the officer sought to take advantage of him opening the gate to get into the compound. This person was Khalid Bouksib whose parents live in the residential community.
“Who are you?” asked the officer, who was not in uniform but who is said to have stated from the outset that he was in the police. The confrontation became heated and Bouksib made it clear he was not going to identify himself. “You don't know who you're dealing with,” he allegedly said to the CRS officer before, according to several witnesses, hurling insults and then punching the policeman three times in the face. The officer was signed off sick for eight days as a result.
However, Khalid Bouksib's lawyer Isabelle Pinto disputes this version of events. “He defended himself against provocation and assault by a police officer who was in flip-flops and who was stopping him from passing freely. It's not a straightforward story!” she said.
The state prosecutor in Rouen, Pascal Prache, said that “investigations are continuing, in particular to establish if the identity of the officer [as a police officer] was known during the violence that was used”.
Neighbours who were present at the time of the incident called the police and Khalid Bouksib was arrested. He spent that night in a cell at a police station in Rouen before being released in the early hours of the morning.
“He had professional obligations, so the prosecution agreed to release him from custody,” one police source initially told Mediapart. Then a second source refused to make “any comment” on the decision to release the suspect from custody so early. Meanwhile a judicial source pointed out that normally suspects are freed “around 8pm when the [prosecutor] goes off duty or after 8.30-9am when they start the next day. They are never released at 5.30am unless there's been an intervention...”
Meanwhile the prosecutor's office in Rouen told Mediapart: “Among the factors that contributed to the release from custody was the need to establish the circumstances of the offence and the harm suffered.”
It appears that, according to prosecutors, while he was in custody Khalid Bouksib claimed he was a “diplomatic and communications” advisor to the French prime minister. He said he had to be freed by 5.30am on Monday June 24th so that he could attend the visit of the Russian premier Dmity Medvedev to Le Havre, the port town which is Édouard Philippe's political stronghold.
However, when questioned by Mediapart the French prime minister's office insisted that Khalid Bouksib had absolutely no role in the [PM's] office” and had not taken part “directly or indirectly” in Medvedev's visit. They told the legal authorities the same thing when they were questioned about it a few hours after Khalid Bouksib's release.
But contradicting what the prosecutor said, Khalid Bouksib's lawyer Isabelle Pinto insisted: “My client never said that he worked at Matignon [editor's note, the prime minister's official residence]. He never mentioned that as an occupation.” She added: “Yes he has a professional relationship with and is a friend of Édouard Philippe, but he does not work with him.”
On Monday 24th June the prosecutor handed the case to detectives from the Service Régional de Police Judiciaire (SRPJ) in Rouen to establish the truth concerning the more sensitive aspects of the case. According to Mediapart's information, the initial investigation quickly ruled out any suggestion that the suspect had “any official role at all” in the prime minister's office. Someone close to the case said “this guy doesn't feature at all” in the government. Investigations have also made clear that there was little doubt, either, that the officer had made clear from the start that he was in the police.
After Mediapart initially broke the story Khalid Bouksib was again taken into custody for questioning at which point he is said to have accepted he did not work for the prime minister but declined to comment on other issues.
Nonetheless, Khalid Bouksib, who works as a consultant on Franco-Moroccan relations and lives in Le Havre, does know Édouard Philippe. In particular the two men box together. “Khalid Bouksib of course has Édouard's mobile number,” said one local activist from the conservative Les Républicains party, who is aware of the links between the two men.
Between 2014 and 2016 Khalid Bouksib, in his role as head of a consultancy, worked on improving ties between Le Havre – where Philippe was mayor – and Tangiers in Morocco. This was marked by the signing of a protocol of friendship in October 2016. “As someone from Le Havre I have seen the dynamism that it has inspired in this town,” Khalid Bouksib said in an interview with the Moroccan press in 2017. In the same interview he said that Édouard Philippe had been able to “reawaken pride in being from Le Havre”.
A member of the French prime minister's entourage told Mediapart: “The prime minister indeed has a friendly relationship with Mr Bouksib.” But they added that the prime minster would find it “totally unacceptable if he were to invoke it in the hope of obtaining any kind of special favour”.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter