Police custody ended for Pierre Chassin. The former elected representative of the National Front was released without prosecution at this stage, said Friday the Paris prosecutor's office, after a judicial investigation was opened Tuesday against him on the degradation of a painting at the Palais de Tokyo.
Pierre Chassin, leader of the National Front group in the municipal council of Mureaux (Yvelines) between 2014 and 2015, was arrested Sunday and placed in custody as part of an investigation opened by the prosecutor's office for damage to exposed cultural property. He was suspected of having projected paint on the work "Fuck abstraction!" by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, accused of child pornography by critics.
Pierre Chassin was then released Tuesday without charge at this stage. The investigations are continuing, the prosecutor's office having entrusted the investigation to an investigating judge. The latter "will carry out the necessary expertise to assess the psychiatric state and criminal responsibility of the person concerned" before deciding on a possible indictment, explained the public prosecutor.
'Smear campaign'
After the fact, President Emmanuel Macron condemned an "act of vandalism". "To attack a work is to attack our values," he tweeted Monday. "In France, art is always free and respect for cultural creation is guaranteed." Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak accused the National Rally of waging a "smear campaign" against the work. The minister had been questioned on the subject by RN MP Caroline Parmentier in March.
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But Marine Le Pen retorted that she could not be "held responsible for an individual fact of someone who was a municipal councillor eight years ago" and assured that Pierre Chassin was no longer a member of the party.
Exhibited in the Parisian contemporary art center since mid-February, the painting represents a frail person with tied hands, forced to perform oral sex by a powerful man without a face. For his detractors, the victim is a child, which the artist denies, invoking the representation of rape as a weapon of war and crime against humanity.
The associations Juristes pour l'enfance, l'Enfance en partage, Face à l'inceste and Innocence en danger, considering the child pornography table, demanded its removal but were rejected in the spring by the administrative court of Paris and then by the Council of State.