Paris (AFP)
The Office of the National Assembly rejected Wednesday the request of the Bordeaux justice to lift the parliamentary immunity of a deputy from Gironde, ex-LREM, in order to hear him in police custody in an investigation for harassment, in the part of a "stormy separation".
The investigation targets Benoît Simian, Member of Parliament since 2017, who spent early October in the Liberté et Territoires parliamentary group.
According to the decision of the Bureau of the National Assembly consulted by AFP, it argues that Mr. Simian "never shied away from justice but, on the contrary, always complied with invitations to free hearings that addressed the gendarmerie services to him; that he undertook to be at the entire disposal of justice and to comply with summons to new free hearings as long as necessary ".
Although in his request formulated in September, the Bordeaux prosecutor's office stressed that a custody measure was the "only means now" at his disposal "to force him to come and explain himself and set the limits of his actions. ", the Bureau of the Assembly considered that the hearing under this system of deprivation of liberties" does not appear sufficiently substantiated to be considered necessary ".
The request of the Bordeaux justice is part of an ongoing investigation, entrusted to the gendarmerie, "for several weeks for moral harassment by a spouse", following actions denounced by Ms. Simian targeting her husband, a specified the prosecution.
This case is itself linked to a "highly contentious" divorce procedure for several months, with "cross complaints" from the two ex-spouses for willful violence, added a source close to the case.
"Like many French people, I filed for divorce. My ex-wife's strategy is to make it a political affair," said Benoît Simian on Wednesday evening in a press release.
"Today, the National Assembly ruled on the request for the lifting of parliamentary immunity which was made against me. It was refused. It is now appropriate that this case return to where it should have remained, in the private sphere ", he concludes in this text posted on Twitter.
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