(Paris) The former Elysee mission manager Alexandre Benalla was sentenced Friday to three years’ imprisonment, one of which was closed under an electronic bracelet, in particular for violence committed during the demonstration on 1er May 2018, the images of which sparked a resounding political scandal.
More than three years after the “Benallagate”, the court sanctioned the “inadmissible and unbearable behavior to the social body, casting opprobrium on the function of police officer” of the former close collaborator of the Head of State.
“You have been invested with a certain power, real with regard to your functions, supposed because of your proximity to the President of the Republic. You have betrayed the trust placed in you by this appointment, ”President Isabelle Prévost-Desprez told the accused, standing at the bar.
The magistrate insisted on the “feeling of impunity and omnipotence” of Alexandre Benalla, also found guilty of fraudulently using his diplomatic passports after his dismissal, fabricated a false document to obtain a service passport and illegally carried a weapon in 2017.
Now 30 years old and converted into the private sector, Alexandre Benalla, who protested his innocence during the trial in September, will appeal his conviction, his lawyer said on BFMTV.
“Alexandre Benalla will obviously appeal this judgment,” said Me Jacqueline Laffont, “I would also like to say that we were particularly shocked […] by the incredible severity of the sentence, which is in total disproportion with the facts in question “and” by the unnecessary violence of the terms “of the deliberation.
The former member of the presidential cabinet saw his sentence accompanied by a fine of 500 euros, a ban from public service for five years and carrying a weapon for ten years, with confiscation of those he possesses.
Beyond requisitions
Absent during the deliberation, the former employee of the presidential party (LREM) Vincent Crase, who had accompanied him during the Labor Day procession, was sentenced to two years’ suspended imprisonment.
The two police officers tried by their side, Maxence Creusat and Laurent Simonin, were respectively fined 5,000 euros and three months in prison for having transmitted video surveillance images to Mr. Benalla.
PHOTO NAGUIB-MICHEL SIDHOM, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Alexandre Benalla (center) attacks a protester, the 1er May 2018.
The court went well beyond the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested eighteen months suspended imprisonment against Alexandre Benalla and one year suspended against Vincent Crase. But it was more lenient for the two officials, against whom two and four months suspended sentence had been required.
The project manager had been identified by the newspaper Le Monde on July 18, 2018 on a video in which he appeared, wearing a police helmet, brutalizing a woman and a man at Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris , at the end of a day of demonstrations from 1er-Mai enamelled with violence.
A member of the presidential cabinet, the young man, 26 at the time, had been integrated into the police system as an observer.
The article in Le Monde had triggered a political earthquake, the aftershocks of which had shaken the top of the state for long months, from revelations from the press to parliamentary committees.
“Made of the Prince”
For the court, Alexandre Benalla committed a “fact of the Prince” by “inviting” his friend Vincent Crase to accompany him, and he then “participated in creating a confusion of genres” between them and the police officers in intervention, detailed the president.
They were found guilty of “violence in meetings” on five people in total in the Latin Quarter that day, as well as “interference with the function of police”.
“It should be noted very clearly that your interventions were not necessary at any time,” the president told the accused.
The two men had invoked a “citizen reflex” by “assisting in the arrest” of persons having “assaulted the police” under the terms of article 73 of the code of criminal procedure, which allows in certain circumstances a citizen to apprehend the perpetrator of a flagrant offense. An “intellectual construction” swept the court.
In its judgment, the court also underlined that Alexandre Benalla had always “denied the facts” and tried to “discredit” the plaintiffs.
MM. Benalla and Crase were ordered to immediately pay 52,000 euros for damages and legal costs to the civil parties.
The lawyer of the Contrescarpe couple, Me Sahand Saber, simply welcomed the fact that the court recognized that they “were not Black Block”.
Alexandre Benalla remains targeted by three preliminary investigations, around a contract signed with a Russian oligarch, on the disappearance of his safes as well as for suspicions of false testimony.