The Russian Piotr Pavlenski and his companion Alexandra de Taddeo, are targeted by a judicial investigation, opened for “invasion of the intimacy of the private life” and “diffusion without the agreement of the person of a recording relating to words or images of a sexual nature, ”learned the Parisian from the Paris prosecutor's office. In this case of intimate videos which pushed Benjamin Griveaux to give up running for the mayor of Paris, the prosecution requested their placement under judicial control.
Both were taken into police custody this weekend for "invasion of privacy" and "dissemination without the person's consent of sexual images", as part of an investigation opened on Saturday following the filing of a complaint against X by Benjamin Griveaux. These police custody ended on Monday afternoon, before Piotr Pavlenski and Alexandra de Taddeo were then brought to the Paris prosecutor's office Monday evening.
The publication of these videos last week on an ad hoc website that has since become inaccessible was a thunderbolt in the municipal campaign in Paris: the head of the presidential party's list, left behind in the polls, threw the sponge Friday morning and Agnès Buzyn left the Ministry of Health to succeed him on Sunday.
In addition, Piotr Pavlenski was targeted by a second judicial investigation, opened by the head of "violence with a weapon and under the influence of drunkenness resulting in incapacity of less than 8 days". A case that dates back to December 31 and a violent fight that occurred during this evening. The Paris public prosecutor's office this time requested that he be placed in pre-trial detention.
In custody, two different strategies
Political refugee in France since 2017, Piotr Pavlenski, 35, said on Friday that he was responsible for the posting of the videos complained of, assuring that he wanted to denounce the "hypocrisy" of Benjamin Griveaux. The latter “used his family by presenting himself as an icon for all the fathers and husbands of Paris. He made propaganda traditional family values, "he said.
Benjamin Griveaux's lawyer, Me Richard Malka, described this justification as "grotesque" and said he doubted that the Russian, who presented himself as an artist, was solely responsible for the dissemination of the videos.
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VIDEO. Removal of Griveaux: who is Piotr Pavlenski, the man who broadcast the videos?
According to our information, if the Russian activist kept silent in police custody, his partner said she was foreign to the posting of videos. Alexandra de Taddeo, a 29-year-old law student, confirmed that the pornographic videos had been sent to her in 2018 by Benjamin Griveaux, with whom she had an affair. She had kept them on her phone ever since. On the other hand, she says that she is completely ignorant of the way in which these images ended up in the possession of her current companion, Piotr Pavlenski.
