President: Official investigation against the former employee of Macron Benalla

Booth: 02:28 | Reading time: 2 minutes

G echoes the former security partner of French President Emmanuel Macron, Alexandre Benalla, and the employees of the ruling party La République en Marche (LREM) ), Vincent Crase, a formal preliminary inquiry was opened. This includes the accusation of "violence at a meeting," said the Paris prosecutor Sunday evening. Macron's remarks on the case were also made public for the first time

The newspaper Le Monde published a few days ago a video showing Benalla and Crase violently demonstrating protesters at a rally in Paris on May 1st and beaten. Benalla was wearing a police helmet, although he was not a policeman. The prosecutor had already opened investigations Thursday and extended Sunday.

As part of the investigation, three police officers were first suspended and then placed in police custody. They would have obtained videos of Benalla from surveillance cameras of the city of Paris. The three police officers were also subjected to a formal preliminary investigation – for breach of professional secrecy and disclosure of surveillance images, as indicated by the Prosecution. The five defendants were placed under judicial control.

Meanwhile, the statements of the head of state were made public for the first time. Benalla's accusations were "unacceptable," Macron said Sunday in Paris after a crisis meeting at the Elysee. "There was no impunity and I will not give it."

Because the incident was known to the government for a long time, but that the prosecution was not informed, President Macron is under pressure in the matter. When he took office, he had announced to bring morality and transparency back into French politics.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was to be questioned by an investigative committee of the National Assembly Monday morning about it. Some MPs have already announced that they would call for the resignation of Collomb if it was found that he was aware of the incident but remained silent.

Meanwhile, the online Facebook platform was rejecting the contents of the Belgian parody portal North Press for the Benalla block case. He had "technical problems" occurring, "that had nothing to do with the content" of the article, Facebook said Sunday.

Nordpress had previously stated that many users had complained that Facebook was blocking the sharing of North Press articles. The portal has accused Facebook of being "blacklisted" for satirical articles about the Benalla affair. Later, the Belgian portal said the situation was back to normal.