The investigation into rape and sexual assault against Jean Lassalle dismissed

Europe 1 with AFP // THOMAS COEX / AFP 12:03 p.m., March 29, 2024

The preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault opened against Jean Lassalle, head of the Rural Alliance list in the European elections, was closed without further action, the Bordeaux prosecutor's office said on Friday, confirming information from the daily Sud Ouest . “The investigations do not make it possible to establish the existence of a criminal offense,” declared the prosecution. The investigation, opened last summer and entrusted to the judicial police, targeted “old facts”, dating from 2010.

According to

, the 45-year-old complainant claimed to have been raped in a hotel in Bordeaux during the campaign for the 2010 regional elections, for which the former Pyrenean MP was head of the MoDem list in Aquitaine. Jean Lassalle, 68, was heard in a free hearing in November. The Pyrenean elected official sat for two decades in the National Assembly, under the label of the UDF, then the MoDem and finally his Resistons! movement.

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A champion of rurality

Mayor for 40 years of the village of Lourdios-Ichère (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), champion of rurality, the double candidate for the presidential election did not stand for re-election in the last legislative elections. He justified his decision by “medical imperatives”.

He became famous by singing at the top of his lungs in 2003 in the hemicycle the Béarnais anthem "Aqueros mountagnos" or by starting a hunger strike in 2006 for 39 days in the National Assembly in a highly publicized fight against the relocation of the Japanese Toyal factory to its canton. The atypical Béarnais MP must lead the Rural Alliance list in the European elections alongside the president of the hunters' federation Willy Schraen.