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Clinging to his notes, elusive, and approximate for nearly two hours, the Minister of the Interior, Gerard Collomb, has practiced the art of dodging the flow of questions from deputies gathered in committee. investigation. It must be said that this hearing was particularly dangerous, as the opposition intended to cook the minister caught between the Paris police headquarters and the Elysee. The parliamentarians are responsible for shedding light on the violent participation of Alexandre Benalla, a close collaborator of Emmanuel Macron, in a police operation, Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris on 1 and May. Their work began Monday morning with the hearing of the Minister of the Interior.
Without understanding the relationship with the facts involved, Gerard Collomb began by referring to the University Paris-I, which became his words a "rear base" of protesters during the social movement, or the laborious interventions in the "squats" of Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
On the facts alleged against Benalla? The Minister of the Interior mainly pointed out the responsibilities of Patrick Strzoda, Macron's chief of staff (see page 4). Did he talk about the situation with the President of the Republic this weekend? "The least possible", tried Collomb, provoking the laughter of the deputies. On the report of the facts to the public prosecutor, the Minister of the Interior considered that it was not his responsibility. This time, Michel Delpuech, the prefect of police of Paris, is targeted. But the latter, also auditioned, clearly refused to badume the role of fuse. "These events result from unacceptable individual excesses, condemnable, against a backdrop of unhealthy cronyism" launched the high official about Benalla and the police also indicted for illegally providing CCTV footage. The few new factual elements he has given confirm the Elysée's grip on the file from the very beginning.
Who authorized Alexandre Benalla to accompany the police on 1 and May?
To believe them, neither Gérard Collomb nor Michel Delpuech knew that Alexander Benalla participated in the maintenance of order on 1 and May. Neither of them allowed him to participate, they said. The interior minister said he learned of his involvement in the violence the next day in the afternoon, and contacted the prefecture and the office of the President of the Republic. "I considered that the facts reported were taken into account at the appropriate level and therefore I did not take up this subject any further," Collomb said. His version does not exactly coincide with Delpuech's more precise narrative. He began by recounting his surprise when he crossed the 1 and May evening, Benalla in the command room. "Are you there?" would have launched him. According to his account, the prefect does not know what the project leader did earlier in the day. On the morning of May 2, the police adviser of the Elysee, Laurent Hottiaux, called Delpuech about the Benalla affair. The prefect then launches internal investigations. The Director of Public Order and Traffic (DOPC), who oversees the police missions for the demonstrations, replies that he was not more aware. It was the deputy chief of staff, Laurent Simonin, who gave the green light to Benalla. "Without reporting to his superior", emphasized Delpuech. Simonin has been indicted this weekend for transmitting the video surveillance footage to Benalla, after the revelation of the case in the press. "On [ses] solicitations," the DOPC also tells Delpuech to have lent a helmet to Benalla for 1 and May, a standard protection equipment for on-board observers (journalists, magistrates, researchers , etc.). For the rest, the police armband and the radio that Benalla was not allowed to have, the prefect said he did not know where they came from: "The judicial inquiry will clarify things."
Why neither the police nor the police were seized in May?
It was not until the violence of Benalla made the front page of the press so that the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) was seized, even though the video was widely circulated, and that the authorities were perfectly aware. According to Collomb, the IGPN itself chose not to open an investigation. The interior minister said a user sent a report on the online platform on 3 May. After viewing, an operator would have considered that the facts did not justify opening an investigation. In the aftermath of revelations in the press and the release of new videos showing Benalla wearing a police armband, Collomb finally seized the IGPN. Delpuech relied on the logic that Benalla does not belong to the police, the IGPN was not competent. The prefect of police did not seize the justice any more in May. "I considered this to be the hierarchical authority of the manager. Benalla was summoned by the chief of staff of the President of the Republic, who pronounced a sanction against him ", was justified, ensuring that the Elysee had not put pressure for the deter. On this subject too, Gerard Collomb discarded himself. "It is not the minister who belongs to [transmettre à la justice]. […] I consider that it is for those who are responsible in their administrations, closer to the ground, to collect the elements to justify the transmission of an alert [à la justice] ", thus returning the ball at the police headquarters
Did they know Alexandre Benalla before these events?
Collomb and Delpuech each claim to have discovered Benalla's presence alongside the police a posteriori. But what did they know about him? Gérard Collomb says that he just recognized it when he crossed it and believed that "it was someone who was part of the police". He therefore baderts that before the outbreak of 1 and May, he did not know precisely his role alongside Macron. Asked about having greeted him on the evening of the demonstration, in the command room of the Paris police headquarters, the Minister of the Interior said that he surely saluted, as the rest of the people present : "I'm used to being urban."
The prefect was much more precise. "Yes", he crossed Benalla several times, because of his post dedicated to the security of the President and the necessary coordination with the Paris police headquarters for his movements: "He intervenes in the organization of the security devices, in connection with our services. " Delpuech said to have met for the first time at the end of the presidential campaign. Then remembers having crossed it again during "events" as the Agricultural Show or July 14.
How did Benalla obtain a permit from weapon port?
This is one of the points where Gerard Collomb knew to be the most precise. According to his story, the employee of Macron "repeatedly requested the services of the Ministry of the Interior to obtain an authorization." The first two requests concerned the previous executive, but the firm of Collomb was also recipient of a request in June 2017. They were all refused because Benalla did not meet the conditions, according to the Minister of the Interior. It is on the basis of another article of the code of the internal security that Benalla was able to obtain his authorization of carrying of weapon near the police prefecture of Paris in October 2017. By the services of Michel Delpuech thus. The request came from the chief of staff of the President of the Republic, said the prefect. Anticipating the hypothesis that Benalla was armed during the demonstration of 1 and May, Delpuech made it clear that his carrying of weapons was only worth "in the exercise of his missions". That is to say at the Elysee Palace and the President's side. The prefect of police finally withdrew when the case broke out. Well after the knowledge of the incident on the Place de la Contrescarpe
Pierre Alonso
,
Ismael Halissat
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