Le Figaro Bordeaux
Was it a premeditated attack by "antifa" militants, in retaliation for violence committed two weeks earlier by members of the Bordeaux Nationalist group, a targeted strike against an identified member of the National Rally (RN), or a simple fight that strangely broke out between a group of Ultramarines and an RN candidate surrounded by his brother and friends? This is what the Bordeaux court began to examine on Monday, a year after acts of violence occurred in the summer of 2022.
The scene lasted only a few minutes. Pierre Le Camus, the unfortunate candidate of the National Rally in the legislative elections in Bordeaux, drinks in a bar on Place Gambetta, with his brother Thomas and a group of friends. "Two people approached and started to have a threatening attitude towards us," says the activist. The situation would have quickly escalated. "They turned over the terrace, chairs were thrown, I was even hit on the head with a glass bottle. My brother ended up on the ground and they kept beating him." The RN activist published shortly after a photograph of his brother, with a swollen face, on social networks.
"It's for Saint-Michel"
Presented during the hearing, images from the video surveillance of the bar and collected by witnesses go in the direction of the testimonies of the victims, revealing several dozen people arriving quickly on the spot, obviously to fight. Some members of Pierre Le Camus' group then took refuge inside the bar, where the images show several of the defendants entering by throwing punches and kicks. One of them threw a chair inside and several unidentified projectiles were fired from outside the facility. In the CCTV footage (without sound), a masked person is seen, raising his arms and clapping his hands rhythmically, performing what seems to be the typical gesture of processions of black blocs and far-left activists, which is usually accompanied by the slogan "Siamo tutti antifascisti".
Filmed from apartments overlooking the street, other images presented to the court clearly suggest the slogan "Bordeaux antifa" and then "we break" repeatedly shouted by an individual of the group, leading the judge to assume that it would be a coordinated operation. Some testimonies specify having heard "it is for Saint-Michel", evoking facts of violence committed on June 25 in the district of the same name in Bordeaux, by several militants of the small group Bordeaux Nationaliste, now dissolved. Last month, seven members of this ultra-right organization were convicted in this case, for aggravated violence of a racist nature and sexist insult.
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The Ultramarines deny being antifa
A few days earlier, during the pride march on June 12, 2022, several far-right activists had climbed onto the eco-citizen house, uttering homophobic slogans, Nazi salutes and throwing projectiles at the demonstrators. Thomas Le Camus was present in court in April 2023 for these facts, but in the dock. In the bar, according to two testimonies presented in hearing on Monday, members of the group of Le Camus brothers would have "boasted of having hit and gassed at the LGBT demonstration" and would have said: "they were well stoned, these little PD". Accusations denied en bloc by Pierre Le Camus, on the sidelines of the hearing. "I have not said or heard anything like that." As for the possibility of settling accounts after the events in Saint-Michel, the RN activist claims to have "no link with this kind of movements" and denounces "an amalgam" between his party and this small group.
In front of the judge, the defendants in turn claimed not to have political demands, to have found themselves in this fight by chance, to rescue a comrade, and not to have heard the slogans "Bordeaux antifa" or "For Saint-Michel". Claiming to be members of the Ultramarines, they deny belonging to the extreme left or the anti-fascist movement. "I followed the movement," says one of the defendants, who is seen throwing a chair inside the bar, admitting to being alcoholic. He would have "a cable" when he saw people he knew taken to task. Another claims to have seen that "it was gone in all directions", and would therefore have decided to "defend them", in particular by throwing a jar of hydroalcoholic gel. A last one even explains that he simply "foolishly followed" the group.
Despite these assertions of the defendants, Pierre Le Camus, supported by the RN deputies of Gironde Grégoire de Fournas and Edwige Diaz, believes that he was directly targeted because of his political opinions and that it was also "impossible" that his attackers did not recognize him. The parliamentarians, who came to the hearing to support the former candidate in the legislative elections, asked for the dissolution of the Ultramarines. "From the moment Gérald Darmanindissolves ultra-right groups in Bordeaux, it seems logical that he does the same for the ultra-left," says Grégoire de Fournas. The trial is expected to last until Tuesday.