The French justice sentenced on Friday (5) to three years in prison — two of them suspended — a former bodyguard of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for assaulting protesters during a protest on May 1, 2018. He too will have to pay a fine of 500 euros (about R$ 3,200).
The case generated a crisis in the Macron government, which should run for re-election in next year’s election.
The court said Alexandre Benalla, 30, had acted with “a sense of impunity and omnipotence,” according to a France Info reporter present at the trial. He was also found guilty of fraudulent use of diplomatic passports and illegal possession of a weapon.
“You have been vested with a certain power because of your functions,” said the president of the court, Isabelle Prévost-Desprez, in delivering the sentence. “You have betrayed the trust placed in that appointment.”
According to her, the conviction is justified by the “gravity of the numerous facts and the missions he carried out, which required rigor and exemplary behavior.” Benalla will serve a one-year sentence at home with an electronic bracelet, according to BFM TV.
In an episode that turned into one of the most serious challenges to Macron’s management, Benalla was filmed beating protesters during the Labor Day acts while accompanying the police. In a video published by the newspaper Le Monde, he grabs and drags a woman across the ground and steps on an unarmed man.
The lack of transparency in the French president’s administration in disclosing the episode and in imposing disciplinary measures against the civil servant generated a strong crisis in the government.
The opposition denounced the case as a “matter of state”. The following months were marked by a series of revelations and hearings in parliamentary committees of inquiry.
The conviction is the first against the former employee, the defendant in another five cases. He denies having beaten protesters and claims to have had a “citizen reaction” to “who had just committed a crime”.
The verdict on the scandal that, along with the “yellow vest” protests, rocked the first part of the president’s term, comes months ahead of presidential elections scheduled for April 2022.
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