Ritchy Thibault never misses an opportunity to get people talking about him. The anarchist activist and former parliamentary collaborator of LFI MP Ersilia Soudais was arrested Thursday in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) on the sidelines of the movement to block high schools, according to several videos broadcast online by Valeurs Acteurs and Europe 1. Information confirmed to Le Figaro by his lawyer, who specifies that Ritchy Thibault was placed in police custody. He should communicate at the end. The activist was under judicial control with a ban on participating in a demonstration.
In the images posted on social networks, the 23-year-old young man, megaphone in hand, addresses a crowd of high school students. “We are going to attack all the police stations. (…) Tomorrow we are going to set fire to the Élysée. On October 17 it will be a thousand times worse than the Yellow Vests. Are you hot? Are we going to form barricades? Are we going to make a revolution? In a second video, he is arrested and taken away by force by three plainclothes police officers. “Kidnapping in the middle of the street in Saint-Denis,” reacted his lawyer Henri Braun on X. “Ritchy Thibault was taken on board by three strong men without any distinctive signs and without any words. It seems that he is at the headquarters of the judicial police at Porte de Clichy. Methods worthy of a police state that wants to muzzle opponents.”
S file since 2023
In demonstrations, the increasingly virulent and insurrectional speeches are the trademark of this young figure of the insurrectional far left. An attitude which has earned him an S registration since 2023 and regular attendance at police stations and courts. “The only way in the streets of Paris is the intifada,” he said in October 2024 during a support rally in Gaza. A sentence which resulted in him being banned from entering the Palais Bourbon by the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet. An unprecedented measure for a parliamentary collaborator. The following year, as part of a rally against Islamophobia in Paris, he called for the formation of “popular self-defense brigades”. Bruno Retailleau had also filed a complaint against him after he described the police as “children of Pétain”.
On September 8, the court excluded him from his own trial. After a succession of provocations, he threatened the prosecutor. He was then appearing for having threatened to kill President Emmanuel Macron at the Agricultural Show in 2024. “Eborgneur, never forget that we are the country of the French Revolution, the country that brings down the heads of monarchs!”, he told the head of state. Placed under judicial supervision, he was prohibited from going to demonstrations. At the hearing, he announced in court that he would not respect this measure. The criminal court is due to deliver its deliberations on October 6.
Ritchy Thibault must also appear in May 2027 for two complaints filed against him by the Paris police prefect. On February 7, 2026, still in demonstration, he called to take up arms, to liberate the Antilles, Guyana and “all these peoples” under the yoke of “French imperialism”. On July 11, 2026, he said, among other things: “On July 14, 1789, the storming of the Bastille was not declared. Today, the capture of the Paris prefecture will not be any more so.” The words he made this Thursday, October 1 in Saint-Denis, in the context of the high school blockades, could earn him yet another lawsuit in court.
