Europe 1 with AFP 08:54, April 14, 2022

After the violent expulsion of an environmental activist on Wednesday from a press conference by Marine Le Pen, the RN candidate and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin passed the buck.

Marine Le Pen affirms that it is the responsibility of the minister's "police officers", when the latter implicates a member of his private order service.

An anti-RN activist expelled manu militari, but by whom?

Marine Le Pen and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin returned the responsibility Wednesday for a muscular evacuation of a press conference of the candidate at the Elysée.

AFP images show an activist from the "Ibiza" collective who held up a heart-shaped sign with a photo of Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin, quickly knocked down by two men, then pulled by the arms by one from them and dragged on the floor out of the room.

ON VIDEO

- An environmental activist dragged to the ground and expelled from a Marine Le Pen conference

"These are Mr. Darmanin's police officers, you have to go to Mr. Darmanin, because I have nothing to do with it", assured the candidate a little later on BFMTV, questioning the "protection services personalities".

"It's not me who gives them instructions or instructions on the method of intervention," she continued.

Marine Le Pen assured that she had "seen nothing" of the incident, and was "delighted that this woman had no more dangerous intentions than those only to challenge me".

Le Pen and Darmanin pass the buck

The activist is an environmental municipal councilor from Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Paris region.

Reply from the Minister of the Interior to the candidate in a tweet: "What contempt for the police officers of the Republic who ensure your protection".

"Rather have the honesty to say that the individual dragging the protester on the ground is a member of your private security service," adds Gérald Darmanin.

During the press conference devoted to international issues, a young man from this left-wing collective, presenting himself as a journalist for "Russia Today", also ironically asked Marine Le Pen "a question from Vladimir Putin": " Why don't you answer him anymore? He misses you."

Marine Le Pen had rejected this "provocateur".

In front of the room, the collective distributed leaflets to denounce Marine Le Pen's "complacency" towards the Russian president, adorned with pink hearts with a pastiche of Putin's affectionate message to the RN candidate.