In the box, like the day before, the two main accused do not speak to each other and barely exchange a glance. But when the president of the Paris Assize Court asks Romain Bouvier to describe what he thought of Loïk Le Priol when they were close friends, that is to say before the night of March 19, 2022 during which Federico Martin Aramburu was killed, he was full of praise, tinged with martial references. "Mr. Le Priol, I never hid it, I considered him a war hero", assumed Romain Bouvier, Tuesday September 8, during the second day of hearing of this trial, devoted to investigations of personalities.
The pasts of Romain Bouvier, prosecuted for attempted assassination, and Loïk Le Priol, accused of assassination, have a common denominator: violence. This is reflected both in their respective journeys and in the basis of their friendly relationship. Both gravitated, in the early 2010s, around the GUD, a small far-right group dissolved by the government in June 2024 because of its supremacist ideology and its violent actions. Before the court, Romain Bouvier, 35, tried several times to demonize this student union which, at the time when he frequented certain members, "ran in the Crous elections" and was well regarded, according to him, by "many teachers at the Assas law faculty", where he studied.
Copy of “Mein Kampf” and neo-Nazi code
He and Loïk Le Priol affirmed that they had never been part of the GUD and that they did not share its ideas. Romain Bouvier explained that he had become closer to it indirectly because he had become friends with Edouard Klein, former leader of the small group. His own father, who died in 2008 of a heart attack, was also part of the GUD, he told the court. Loïk Le Priol, 32, for his part admitted that if he had been asked, when he was younger, if he was part of the GUD, he could have answered "yes" to "gargle" it.
“At a period of my life, I was able to be permeable to a certain discourse.”
Loïk Le Priol, co-accused
before the Paris Assize Court
In 2016, he created a clothing brand called “Babtou solid certified”, as his personality investigator recalled. During the hearing, a defense lawyer, Yann Le Bras, asked him for the digits of his old PIN code. Loïk Le Priol brushed aside the question and the lawyer then answered for him, affirming that the code includes the number “88”, a secret code used by neo-Nazis which means “Heil Hitler”. “We can make the numbers say everything,” retorted Loïk Le Priol.
In 2015, Romain Bouvier and Loïk Le Priol participated in the beating of Edouard Klein. They were sentenced in June 2022 to respectively three and two years in prison in this case, after a judicial review which they did not respect. This required them not to socialize and not to carry weapons, but they broke these two rules the night Federico Martin Aramburu died. Regarding the violence committed in a meeting on Edouard Klein, “it was a surge of violence and abject humiliation,” conceded Romain Bouvier. “I had toxic masculinity.” According to him, the former leader of the GUD “violated his companions”, but “it was up to the justice system to deal with that”.
Before the Assize Court, Loïk Le Priol admitted that he had spent a lot of time, during his youth, in alcoholic evenings and the fights that go with them, beyond the "Klein" episode, and that he was questioning this facet of his life, violence included. The president of the court returned to his chilling remarks, as reported in the press in recent days. To a prison guard, he is said to have said, regarding the tragic evening which led to the death of Federico Martin Aramburu: "What I liked best were the last four bastos that I put in the buffet." Loïk Le Priol denies having made this statement and criticized justice “influenced by the media”.
After justifying the presence of a copy of Mein Kampf in his library (a “very rare, in German and Gothic characters” edition which he intended to resell, he explains), Romain Bouvier confirmed his passion for weapons. He collected some of them, those from the "19th century in particular", and practiced shooting several times a year "on a private property".
“[Shooting] is an interest that I had but that I will never have again.”
Romain Bouvier, co-accused
before the Paris Assize Court
Loïk Le Priol, as a former naval commando, also had the opportunity to handle weapons. “At the beginning, I was not necessarily the best and in the end, I improved,” recalled the accused, who estimates that “thousands of cartridges” are fired each year by a soldier. “It develops instinctive reflexes that allow you to defend yourself on the day you have to shoot first, saving your life or those of your comrades.” During the tragic night of March 19, 2022, he shot the Argentine rugby player six times, and Romain Bouvier four times.
“The bullets were buzzing”
While he dreamed of a military career, Loïk Le Priol was removed from the navy in 2017, two years after his repatriation from Djibouti “due to severe post-traumatic stress”, according to military archives. From his box, the thirty-year-old mentioned a mission in Niger, facing the jihadists, which particularly affected him. “The bullets weren't whistling, they were buzzing, they were so close to the head that you could feel the vibrations,” he said, remaining quite evasive about the precise reasons for his post-traumatic stress. Then, without any real context and after multiple reminders, he declared, in tears, that he had held a “torn child” in his arms.
The war in Ukraine "created in him reminiscences of his post-traumatic stress disorder", also noted the personality investigator. Loïk Le Priol, who has Ukrainian friends, develops a certain paranoia. On the terrace, for example, he systematically places his back to the wall to have control over what is happening around him. Ukraine is also the country where he tried to take refuge before his run ended in Hungary.
The president of the court recalled that Loïk Le Priol had been involved in 2015 in violence committed against a woman in Djibouti. One of the reasons for his removal? No, according to the accused, who claims that it was an ambush set up by “prostitutes from Ethiopia” to make money. In Djibouti, soldiers are, according to him, perceived as “wallets on legs”. And if Loïk Le Priol denies having had a sexual relationship with her, the president emphasizes that she claims the opposite.
He then politely answered the president's questions about his romantic relationship with Lyson Rochemir, his girlfriend at the time, prosecuted in this case for "complicity in attempted assassination". “I don't think it's tenable to require a young girl to wait for someone in the closet for years,” he said, aware that the outcome of the trial will hardly be favorable to him. Loïk Le Priol and Romain Bouvier both face life imprisonment.
