On Tuesday, an alleged leader of the group had already been arrested. They are suspected of having participated in the violence during Eric Zemmour’s meeting on December 5.
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A second member of the “Zouaves Paris” was arrested Wednesday, December 15 in Bonnières-sur-Seine in the Yvelines, France Inter learned from a source close to the investigation, the day after the arrest of the alleged leader of the group, suspected of being involved in the violence committed against SOS Racisme activists during a meeting of Eric Zemmour in Villepinte on December 5. The Bobigny prosecutor’s office specifies that this second arrested is 18 years old, while the first is 23 years old.
They are both in police custody for “aggravated willful violence resulting in an ITT of less than eight days” – the violence is considered to be aggravated because it was carried out in a meeting and with a weapon, affirms the Bobigny prosecutor’s office. Investigators must determine the role these two men played in the punch and chair assault on anti-racist activists who had made a happening during this first major event of the far-right candidate’s campaign. .
This assault, filmed, had toured social networks. Among the 12 SOS Racisme activists present that evening, 11 lodged a complaint and “nine presented themselves to the forensic units which issued them with medical certificates establishing ITTs ranging from zero to eight days”, adds the Bobigny parquet.
The leader arrested Tuesday, Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, is known to the courts: he has already been sentenced to six months in prison for violence during demonstrations of yellow vests in December 2018 in Paris and he is involved in the attack on a bar frequented by anti-fascists in the XXth arrondissement of Paris in June 2020, according to information from franceinfo.
In total, around fifty people have been identified by the police as belonging to the Zouaves, this tiny ultra-right group. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced last Sunday that he had initiated a procedure for the dissolution of the Zouaves.