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, said this Friday to AFP the Paris prosecutor’s office, 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.
“For me, this is not a normal activity”
On LCI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had declared about the members of this unit: “We will send these young people to be treated”. “Can you imagine what it’s like to say I volunteer to get on a motorcycle and beat up people as I pass? It is to manifest a state of mind which does not suit me and which 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 treatment, hearings, we think,” he added. The former Insoumis candidate repeated the wish of his troops to “dissolve” this unit, a proposal which is also currently supported by a petition.
“Staggering comparisons made with the Voltigeurs”
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 had declared that the BRAV-M “are a certain type of volunteer police officers, who seek violence, that’s how they are selected, who are launched into the streets of Paris with truncheons and guns, breaking bones and manhunts as seen in the footage 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.
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.
Attacking “remarks against his officials, which are insulting and some of which fall under criminal and judicial qualification”, he warned that “from now on, whoever makes these comments – a politician, a lawyer -” , he would “systematically seize the justice of these insults”.