France President Emmanuel Macron's ex-bodyguard handed jail term for May Day assault

An ex-security aide at the Elysée for the French President Emmanuel Macron named Alexandre Benalla who hit headlines in July 2018 after his footage beating a protester at the May Day rally emerged, was sentenced on Friday. He got handed over a year of imprisonment and got a two-year suspended sentence for several counts of charges including assault.

Benalla, who was Macron’s bodyguard during the 2017 presidential campaign, was sacked after a shocking visual of him dressed in a police visor and assaulting a protester, was released in 2018 by France’s Le Monde. The “Benalla affair” scandal from France’s May 1 labour demonstrations created ripples across Europe and worldwide, and a criminal investigation was launched against the French president’s ex-aide, according to French media reports. 

On Friday, a French court convicted Benalla for assaulting protesters during the May Day rally, as well as for allegedly faking the documents and for illegal possession of a firearm. In the video that surfaced in 2017, Benalla, the 30-year-old ex-bouncer was seen throwing punches and striking an unarmed protester, and assaulting a woman by holding her by the neck. After the court’s ruling, Benalla’s attorney announced that her client will appeal his conviction, French outlets reported. Macron’s presidency had attracted major backlash due to the Benalla scandal as critics and opposition lawmakers accused the French leader of a cover-up and not reporting his security aide to the police until the newspaper exposed him. 

Benalla termed assault as 'reflexive' actions, abused diplomatic passport for foreign trips

Benalla in court denied all charges against him arguing that his actions were “reflexes” that happened while he was trying to assist the law enforcement authorities in controlling what he described “unruly” yellow vest protesting mob. In the visuals, although, the then 27-year-old former bodyguard of Macron was spotted pointing a gun at one of the demonstrators in a powerful show of political backing. Benalla had also made high-profile trips to Chad and Cameroon in 2018 for high-level meetings on diplomatic passports abusing his position and role in Elysée, investigative outlet Mediapart first reported.

All this while, Macron had remained silent but after the incident, the presidential palace issued a statement saying that they had no links with the dismissed ex-bodyguard of the French leader. In a statement cited by AP, the French official said that Macron remains “determined to break with the system of intermediaries” which was traditionally used by French leaders in former colonies in Africa. It had also asked the Foreign Ministry to take “all appropriate measures” against the illegal use of diplomatic passports.