Alexandre Benalla and the four other suspects indicted

first judicial act of the Benalla affair ended Sunday with the indictment of the former man-trust Emmanuel Macron, accused of violence on the sidelines of demonstrations on May 1 in Paris, and four other suspects, including three police officers. This file which, besides its judicial component, is the subject of an administrative inquiry and a parliamentary inquiry, plunges the executive in a political turmoil unprecedented since the beginning of the five-year period of Emmanuel Macron, which has made the exemplarity and transparency the watchwords of his mandate.

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The Paris prosecutor's office announced early this evening that Alexandre Benalla, 26 years, ex-chargé de mission and ex-deputy chief of staff at the Elysee, was indicted five heads: "Violence meeting not causing total incapacity for work", "interference in the exercise of a public office by performing acts reserved to the public authority "," port and complicity of prohibited port and without right of insignia regulated by the public authority "," concealment of diversion of images from videoprotection " and "concealment of breach of professional secrecy" . He has been placed under judicial supervision and is prohibited from performing a public service or a public service mission. Vincent Crase, a salaried reservist gendarme from La Republique en Marche who was at his side on May 1, is indicted for "violence in meetings," "interference in the exercise of a public office" and "prohibited harbor".

Justice seized the case Thursday the day after revelations of the newspaper Le Monde who identified Alexandre Benalla on an amateur video in which we can see, wearing a police helmet and surrounded by CRS, hitting a young man and abusing a young woman in the square of Contrescarpe, in the fifth district of Paris. We see him on other images wearing a police armband while he had integrated that day the device of the police as an "observer" in conditions still poorly defined. The two protesters, who were then arrested, were identified and asked to be heard later by the investigators, we learned Saturday close source of the file. According to Libération which broadcasts images on Sunday evening preceding these scenes, the couple threw "violently three objects" against the CRS, resulting in the "intervention" of Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase

Article 73 of the Code of Criminal Procedure

The three police officers indicted, a controller general of the prefecture and two commissioners suspended since Thursday as a precautionary measure, are suspected of illegally extracting and sent video surveillance images of the City of Paris showing the scenes of the Contrescarpe to "a third person" – in this case Alexandre Benalla. According to The Sunday Diary the latter asked for and obtained his images to support his defense to the investigators, namely, that he would have come under Article 73 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which authorizes "within the framework of flagrant crime or flagrant offense any person (…) to apprehend the author and to bring it in front of the nearest judicial police officer". Officials are indicted for "misappropriation of images from video surveillance" and "breach of professional secrecy", among others. They are also placed under judicial control.

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The Minister of the Interior Gérard Collomb, whose role and the responsibility are the subject of speculation, will be heard Monday from 10 am by the Assembly inquiry committee at a public hearing. It will be Tuesday afternoon by the Committee on the Laws of the Senate, also constituted in committee of inquiry. The presidency of the Republic, which had laid off Alexandre Benalla from 4 to 19 May and suspended his salary after being informed on 2 May of his actions, hired Friday dismissal proceedings against him. It defends a "proportionate" treatment of this case, denounced as "a state scandal" by the opposition of right and left, which weakens Emmanuel Macron and paralyzes the work of Parliament. The head of state has not spoken publicly for the moment on this subject. According to the JDD, he spoke to Alexander Benalla on the telephone after the publications of World .

(With Reuters)