RN Congress in Orléans: the UEJF announces filing a complaint for “meeting violence” and “slanderous denunciation”

For a banner denouncing anti-Semitism, they would have been “hit”, “strangled” then forcibly evacuated. In any case, this is what Messrs Sacha Ghozlan and Lucas Veil, lawyers for the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), denounce in a press release sent to Le Figaro. They announced that the student organization would file a complaint for “meeting violence and slanderous denunciation.”

The facts are linked to the National Rally congress - dedicated to the re-election of Jordan Bardella - which was held this Sunday, October 25. That same day, several activists from the student organization displayed a banner within the congress grounds proclaiming: “Bardella re-elected: racism and anti-Semitism do not bother the RN, on the contrary!” A “strictly peaceful” action, according to their lawyers, intended to “denounce” these abuses within the party – and which comes in the wake of the revelations by Mediapart, which at the end of September attributed anti-Semitic writings written in his youth to Jordan Bardella. Accusations that the president of the RN denied, announcing that he had filed a defamation complaint against the online media. Present at this Congress, two journalists from Mediapart were also attacked by participants as shown in several videos on social networks.

Still according to their advice, several UEJF students say they were “hit”, “strangled”, “insulted” and “threatened” by participants, before being “brutally exfiltrated” by the Security Protection Department (DPS), the RN security service. “Numerous videos filmed on site, notably by journalists, attest to the calm of the UEJF activists in the face of the violence which was unleashed against them,” thunder the two lawyers, who report serious injuries: a “broken nose,” “bruises,” “traces of strangulation” and “blows to the head and body.”

In the wake of the altercation, members of the security service allegedly accused two UEJF officials present on the scene of having themselves committed violence. The two students were thus placed in police custody, before the measure was lifted a few hours later, assure Mes Sacha Ghozlan and Lucas Veil. The latter describe these allegations as “completely false” and intend to take legal action. “Two UEJF officials were deprived of their liberty for several hours on the basis of false accusations, while their attackers remain free,” protest the two lawyers, who expect from the justice system a criminal response “meeting the seriousness of these facts”.