Selfie of Benalla with a weapon: it was a water pistol, according to the interested party

"It may sound crazy but that's the reality": in front of the judges, Alexandre Benalla said that the weapon appearing on a selfie taken during the presidential campaign of En Marche! was probably a water gun, learned Sunday AFP source close to the record.

No indictment for this reason. The investigating judges who re-heard it on 29 November have given up at this stage to order his indictment for "unauthorized possession of Category B weapon", as they initially envisaged, according to the interrogation of the ex-chargé de mission at the Élysée which AFP has been aware of. On September 24th, Mediapart published a picture of a relaxed-looking man, Alexander Benalla, who appeared to be brandishing a Glock pistol at a time when he was not allowed to carry a weapon outside the headquarters of En marche!

#Benalla: "I never carried a weapon outside the campaign headquarters" https://t.co/7qsK7hwJQk

"A non-event," pleads Benalla. The scene takes place on April 28, 2017 in Poitiers in a restaurant, a few kilometers from Chatellerault where Emmanuel Macron has just held a meeting. The one who is then member of the service of the campaign takes the pose with the side of two men and a waitress. The pistol is pointed at the face of the young woman, all smiles. More than eighteen months later, Alexandre Benalla is in the office of three judges. He evades the controversy: "It's simple and ridiculous" (...) "a non-event", he sweeps. And for good reason: according to him, the weapon exhibited was a water pistol. "Yes, it may sound crazy but that's the reality".

He claims, however, to have no "memory of this selfie". During this evening of the between-two rounds of the presidential election, the atmosphere is "festive" and the service of order "in mode of relaxation". "The tone was a joke, a member of the security department who had a water pistol and other things, had fun with it," he says. However, he claims to have no "memory of this selfie", nor to have the object in hand. "If this selfie was taken, I do not see what is wrong," he says before throwing the judges: "It's a little 'paella instruction', everything that concerns me is collected ".

Charged for violence in the Jardin des Plantes. The day after the publication of this photo, an investigation was opened in Poitiers to determine whether Alexander Benalla had at that time a license for carrying weapons in good and due form. The investigations were then joined to the investigation conducted in Paris since the revelation in July by Le Monde of his alleged role in a muscled arrest on the sidelines of May Day demonstrations on the Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris. After this affair, which earned him a first indictment on 22 July, the judges also indicted him on 29 November for another contentious intervention at the side of the police, at the Jardin des Plantes, a few hours earlier.