French authorities have opened a murder probe into the death of a far-right activist last week, a public prosecutor said Monday, in a killing the government has blamed partly on the hard left.
Quentin Deranque, 23, died after sustaining a severe brain injury when he was attacked Thursday by “at least six” people on the sidelines of a far-right protest against a left-wing politician speaking at a university in Lyon, the western city’s prosecutor Thierry Dran said at a press conference Monday.
No arrests had yet been made and authorities were working to identify the masked and hooded suspects in the killing, which is being investigated as an “intentional homicide” and “aggravated assault”, he added.
The incident has fuelled tension between France’s far right and hard left ahead of municipal elections in March and the 2027 presidential race, in which the far-right National Rally party (RN) is seen as having its best chance yet at winning the top job.
The government has already blamed rhetoric from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party for fuelling the violence that led to Deranque’s death.
An anti-immigration collective called Nemesis, who say they fight violence against Western women, said Deranque had been at the protest to protect its members.
Nemesis has blamed the killing on the Jeune Garde (Young Guard), an anti-fascist youth group co-founded by an LFI lawmaker before he was elected to parliament.
The group — which was dissolved in June — denied any links to the “tragic events”.
Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon accused the LFI Monday of having “encouraged a climate of violence for years”.
“There is therefore — in light of the political climate and the climate of violence — a moral responsibility on the part of LFI” for the attack on Thursday, she told broadcaster BFMTV.
– ‘Pitched battle’ –
According to a source close to the probe into the Lyon killing, there was “a pitched battle between members of the far left and the far right”.
A video broadcast by TF1 television of the alleged attack shows a dozen people hitting three others lying on the ground, two of whom manage to escape.
A witness told AFP “people were hitting each other with iron bars”.
LFI’s veteran leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, a three-time presidential candidate widely expected to run again next year, has denied his party were to blame.
LFI lawmaker Raphael Arnault, who co-founded the Jeune Garde group, has said he was horrified by the death.
One of Arnault’s assistants has been banned from parliament after several witnesses mentioned him in the investigation into the fatal beating, its speaker Yael Braun-Pivet said on Monday.
On the far right, the presidential hopeful from the RN, three-time contender Marine Le Pen, has condemned the “barbarians responsible for this lynching”.
– No more ‘alliance’ –
Opinion polls put the far right in the lead for the presidency in 2027, when President Emmanuel Macron will have to step down after the maximum two consecutive terms in office.
Le Pen is hoping to vie for the post despite a graft conviction.
She has said she will decide whether to run after an appeal court ruling in July, when she could hand over to her lieutenant Jordan Bardella.
A poll of 1,000 people published on Sunday placed Bardella as the preferred candidate in the 2027 vote, ahead of Le Pen in second place.
The left, including LFI, allied against the far right after Macron called for snap parliamentary elections in 2024.
But the plan backfired, with Macron losing even more of his majority and the RN becoming the biggest party in the lower house.
Raphael Glucksmann, a centre-left member of European parliament, on Monday rejected another such broad leftist alliance.
“It’s unthinkable that, on the left, we would continue to harbour the slightest doubt about a possible electoral alliance with LFI,” he told the RTL broadcaster.
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