Paris (AFP)
Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced Thursday his intention to file a complaint for "public defamation" against Arte after the broadcast of a documentary accusing him of having privileged "electoral interests to the detriment of the effectiveness of the interventions of the forces of order during the night of the attacks of November 13, 2015 ".
"Faced with a questioning as violent as it is odious on the Arte channel, I decided to file a complaint on the count of public defamation against a public person," he wrote on Twitter.
In the documentary "Shadows of the Bataclan", broadcast on September 3, a former intelligence officer says that at the time, Manuel Valls, then Prime Minister, "was clearly targeting the post of President of the Republic".
"He needed to grab the good graces within the police," he continues.
"He had to put the police forward on interventions. Even if it means not involving some and favoring others, such as for example the BRI" (Research and Intervention Brigade).
"This amounts to imputing to me an almost diabolical cynicism since I would not hesitate to sacrifice human lives on the altar of a tortuous electoral calculation", protested the former head of government, believing that these words exceeded " broadly the permissible limits of freedom of expression ".
The complaint is "in the process of being lodged," his lawyer, Me Richard Malka, told AFP.
"Everyone knows the total commitment of Manuel Valls as Minister of the Interior and then as Prime Minister during this dramatic period. He obviously has my full support," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted Thursday.
The former Socialist Prime Minister also received the support of Christophe Castaner.
© 2021 AFP