Europe 1 with AFP 8:16 p.m., February 13, 2024

Several Lyon elected officials again urged the government on Tuesday to dissolve the ultra-right groups active in the city, with the prefect emphasizing the need to build a case that “stands up in court”.

Based on recent arrests in this movement and the dissolution of the Lille group La Citadelle, the environmentalist mayor Grégory Doucet and seven deputies from the Rhône majority sent separate letters to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.

They asked him again to dissolve two small groups – the Remparts and Lyon populaire – and to close a bar, La Traboule, as well as a combat sports hall, the Agogé, which they have in Old Lyon. Nearly 300 people also marched Monday evening in Lyon, at the call of several left-wing organizations, to relay this message.

In France, the ultra-right brings together nearly 3,300 people, including 1,300 on S files.

While saying she was ready to act “as quickly as possible”, the prefect of Rhône Fabienne Buccio warned against haste. “The dissolution of associations (...) is done calmly and seriously (...) more than through demonstrations, letters or injunctions,” she said on BFM TV Lyon. “I want us to do solid work and to stand up to justice,” she added, believing that the recent arrests made it possible to “fill out a solid case.”

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Seven suspected ultra-right activists were indicted on Friday for "criminal conspiracy", almost three months after an attack on an association premises in Vieux-Lyon where a conference on Gaza was taking place. Two of them were imprisoned. Furthermore, the former spokesperson for the Remparts, Sinisha Milinov, was sentenced to prison on Tuesday for a racist attack in early February while leaving a bar, with another young man.

The ultra-right, which brings together nearly 3,300 people in France including 1,300 on S files, according to a recent parliamentary report, has spread throughout the territory but Lyon, one of its historic strongholds, is regularly the scene of banned demonstrations or violence .