PARIS, July 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The most damaging scandal of Emmanuel
Macron’s presidency deepened on Saturday with his interior minister due to
face a grilling in parliament over his response to a top security aide of
Macron caught on video beating up a young man at a Paris protest in May.
Opposition lawmakers have demanded that Macron, who has so far remained
silent about the incident, explain the government’s stand after the videos of
his aide Alexandre Benalla emerged this week.
“If Macron doesn’t explain himself the Benalla affair will become the
Macron affair,” far-right leader Marine Le Pen said in a tweet.
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the Republicans party, accused the government
of “trying to camouflage a matter of state” and said Macron had to clarify
the matter to the French people.
And far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon from the France Unbowed party called
it a scandal of Watergate proportions and accused Macron of “organising a
personal militia.”
Watergate was the name of a dirty tricks scandal that led to the
resignation of former US president Richard Nixon in 1974.
Benalla, 26, was initially suspended without pay but on Friday Macron fired
his former security aide, who was taken into custody suspected of unlawfully
receiving police surveillance footage in a bid to clear his name.
He is to face a magistrate on Sunday, Paris prosecutors said.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has been heavily criticised over the
affair, with some opposition lawmakers saying his job is on the line after
press reports that he knew about Benalla’s violence.
Collomb will be publicly questioned from 10 am (0800 GMT) on Monday morning
by the Law Commission of the National Assembly, the head of the lower house
of parliament announced.
Also on Saturday, three police officers were taken into custody suspected
of providing the surveillance footage to Benalla. They, too, will go before a
magistrate on Sunday.
– ‘Violation of professional secrets’ –
They were accused of “misappropriation of images from a video surveillance
system”, as well as a “violation of professional secrets”, the prosecutor’s
office said.
The Paris police prefecture said the footage was “improperly disclosed to a
third party on the evening of July 18,” the same night the newspaper Le Monde
published the video that sparked the scandal.
That video, shot on a smartphone, showed Benalla wearing a riot police
helmet and surrounded by officers, manhandling and striking a protester
during a May 1 demonstration.
In a second video published by the newspaper late Thursday, Benalla — who
has never been a policeman — is also seen violently wrestling a young woman
to the ground during scuffles on a square near the Rue Mouffetard, a
picturesque street in the fifth arrondissement.
The three senior officers taken into custody, who belong to the Paris
department of public order and traffic, include a deputy chief of staff and a
commissioner in the fifth arrondissement, as well as the commander in charge
of relations between the prefecture and the Elysee Palace, said several
sources close to the case.
Benalla’s home in the southwestern suburbs of Paris was raided on Saturday.
Vincent Crase, a security aide for Macron’s Republic on the Move party and
an associate of Benalla’s who also intervened during the May protest, was
also taken into custody on Friday.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday that the custody of both
Benalla and Crase had been extended by 24 hours.