16h45 – Case Benalla: investigation into violence in the garden Plants expanded after a new video

The investigation opened on Monday May 1 at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris has been extended to other alleged facts, after the release of a new video on which seem to appear Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase, the prosecutor's office of Paris announced on Tuesday

These investigations were also entrusted to the Brigade of repression against the person (BRDP) of the judicial police of Paris.

In this new video, unveiled by Franceinfo and Mediapart, two men resembling the employee of the Elysee and the employee of the presidential party LREM appear to question an individual while CRS are around them. The Jardin des Plantes was located on the parade route of May 1.

According to the two media, these images were shot around 17H00, a few hours before the clashes of the Place de la Contrescarpe, located a few hundred meters , at the origin of the most serious political crisis crossed by the president Emmanuel Macron since his election.

The new investigation opened Monday by the public prosecutor's office stemmed from the complaints of two young people of 23 and 24 years affirming to have been victims of a muscled interpellation in the Jardin des Plantes after meeting Vincent Crase and Alexandre Benalla, present with some members of the police as "observers" of the demonstration.

One of the two plaintiffs, a woman, had shot a video, broadcast by Libération on Friday, showing a tense but confusing scene. Both were unable to identify who had apprehended and molested them.

The investigation was opened for "willful violence in meetings by a person in the custody of the public authority", "arbitrary interference with individual liberty", "usurpation signs reserved for the public authority "," interference in the exercise of a public function "," voluntary degradation of a good ", in this case a video, and" fraudulent introduction into a treatment system of personal data. "

In an interview with the Journal du Dimanche, Mr. Benalla refuted any" intervention "on his part at that time in the Jardin des Plantes. "I was behind the police as an observer, you can see it clearly, I do not have a helmet, no armband, no radio," he said.

For the now famous sequence of the Place de la Contrescarpe, an instruction has been opened. Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase are particularly indicted for "violence in meetings" on a young couple present during clashes between CRS and protesters.

M. Benalla had justified his intervention in this place, revealed by several videos, by his will to help the police against these two people whom he described as "hysterical".