The investigation, opened on Wednesday, was entrusted to the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against persons.
An investigation has been opened for “public insult towards a person holding public authority” after comments by Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the BRAV-M unit reported by the prefect of police Laurent Nuñez, the prosecutor’s office said on Friday March 31. Paris, confirming information from the Parisian.
This investigation, opened since Wednesday and entrusted to the Brigade for the Suppression of Delinquency against Persons, targets the former LFI presidential candidate after remarks on Sunday about the Brigade for the Suppression of Motorized Violent Action, a unit recently implicated in several cases of police violence in the context of protests against pension reform.
On LCI, he said about the members of this unit: “We will send these young people for treatment.” “Can you imagine what it’s like to say I’m willing to get on a motorcycle and beat up people as I pass? It’s showing a state of mind that doesn’t suit me and that I find abnormal,” continued the ex-senator. “For me, this is not a normal activity”he said again.“There are all kinds of violence for which we have had treatment, hearings, we are thinking”, he added.
The investigation also targets Me Arié Alimi
The former Insoumis candidate repeated the wish of his troops to “dissolve” this unity, a proposal which is also currently supported by a petition.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that its investigation also targeted the lawyer Arié Alimi, who is the subject of a separate report from the prefect of police. On RMC, on March 22, he declared that the BRAV-M “are a certain type of volunteer police officers, who seek violence, that’s how they are selected, who are thrown into the streets of Paris with batons and weapons, who break bones and who go on hunts to the man as seen in the images all day long right now.”
This lawyer regularly defends victims of police violence, such as the family of Cédric Chouviat, a delivery man who died in Paris following an arrest in early 2020. “I would be happy to be able to substantiate my remarks even more in the context of this procedure”, reacted Arié Alimi Friday with franceinfo.
On Tuesday, Laurent Nuñez had rejected any dissolution of the BRAV-M and castigated the “staggering (…) comparisons made with the Voltigeurs”, these motorcycle units implicated in the death of Malik Ousekine in 1986. “remarks against its officials, which are insulting and some of which fall under criminal and judicial qualification”he warned that “from now on, whoever is saying this – a politician, a lawyer -“, he would grasp “systematically the justice of these insults”.