The Court of Cassation rejected on Wednesday June 26 the appeal filed by the former Elysée mission manager Alexandre Benalla, making definitive his sentence to one year in prison in the case of the violence of 1is May 2018.
While he was a member of Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet, Alexandre Benalla participated in law enforcement operations during the parade on 1is May 2018 in Paris, alongside the police. He is accused of having exceeded his status as an observer by participating in several violent arrests of demonstrators, on the Place de la Contrescarpe and in the Jardin des Plantes, alongside his friend Vincent Crase, a former gendarmerie reservist. He was indicted for violence for these two episodes, as well as for wearing a police armband without authorization.
Six years after this scandal which shook Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, the decision of the highest judicial court confirms the conviction on appeal of Alexandre Benalla to three years in prison including one year closed, pronounced on September 29, 2023 by the Paris Court of Appeal.
Also read (2019) | Registrations, violence, passports… Navigating Benalla affairs
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Images of Alexandre Benalla at Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris on 1is May 2018 triggered a political storm in July of the same year, when The world had identified, under a police helmet, this close friend of Emmanuel Macron.
In September 2023, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted him, as well as Vincent Crase, a former gendarmerie reservist, for violence against several people in the Latin Quarter, on the sidelines of the Parisian demonstration to which they did not attend. attended only as observers. Vincent Crase’s cassation appeal was also rejected.
But Alexandre Benalla, 32, will not go to prison: the appeal court had in fact adjusted the firm part of his sentence. It is a sentencing judge (JAP) who will determine the conditions (this could be under electronic bracelet).
Guilty of willful violence in a meeting and interference with the function of a police officer
As in the first instance, the former mission officer was also sanctioned for having fraudulently used his diplomatic passports after his dismissal, forged a false document in order to obtain a service passport and illegally carried a weapon in 2017.
From the beginning, Alexandre Benalla maintains that he wanted, by “citizen reflex”, “to question” of the “aggressors” of police officers during a demonstration punctuated by incidents, speaking of “failed technical gestures”.
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The court of appeal found on the contrary, like the court before it, that he was guilty of willful violence in a meeting and of interference with the function of a police officer. She thus dismissed the key argument of the defense, which invoked article 73 of the code of criminal procedure, authorizing a citizen to apprehend the author of a flagrant offense in certain circumstances.
Anyone who lives today in Switzerland and works in the private sector remains the target of three investigations in France. One of them concerns his role in signing contracts with Russian oligarchs while he was stationed at the Elysée.
Another, a judicial investigation opened in February 2019 for “obstruction of the manifestation of the truth”, aims to determine whether he concealed evidence, contained in particular in two safes. Finally, a third, launched in April 2019, concerns suspicions of “false testimony” of MM. Benalla and Crase before the Senate commission of inquiry.
Read also (2019) | Benalla affair: the Paris prosecutor’s office opens two new investigations
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