Attack on an RN activist in Bordeaux: five people sentenced to one year of electronic bracelet

Le Figaro Bordeaux

Until the end, the defendants will have contested any political claim and any coordinated action. Yet facts and images incriminate them. In July 2022, several dozen people stormed the terrace of a bar on Place Gambetta in Bordeaux and attacked a small group, including a candidate of the National Rally in the legislative elections, Pierre Le Camus, and his brother. Among their alleged attackers, six members of the group of Bordeaux football supporters of the Ultramarines appeared this week before the judicial court. Five of them were sentenced jointly and severally to five years' imprisonment, four of which were suspended. They will serve their sentence by wearing an electronic bracelet for one year.

A collective condemnation for all the violence committed on the various victims, because these attacks were committed in a group. "The court makes a severe application of the criminal law," explains the judge, saying he is "convinced that it was indeed a concerted action". In addition to their electronic surveillance, the five defendants will no longer be allowed to appear within 300 meters of the bar where they had gathered, nor to contact the victims. They will also be required to complete a citizenship internship.

A collective sentence about equal to what the representative of the public prosecutor demanded, who had highlighted the violence of one of the defendants, Damien M., towards Thomas Le Camus, the brother of the RN candidate, when he lay on the ground, unconscious. "He indulged in this ignominy of hitting a man on the ground when he was lifeless, and leaving him there for dead." In view of the vehemence of the blows that were brought to him, Thomas Le Camus, whose swollen face caused a stir on social networks, could have died, says the prosecutor. "We confused his head with a football," recalls indignantly his lawyer, Hugues de Lacoste Lareymondie.

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'A savage and premeditated attack'

During the two days of hearings, the six men in turn claimed not to have premeditated this attack, but to have drunk alcohol and "followed the movement", without knowing who was targeted. However, according to several testimonies, the individual who took refuge in the bar, Enguerrand O., would have been recognized, as would the RN candidate, whose face was present on election posters the previous month. "I want you to say anything, it's your right, but I don't want you to think that the court doesn't realize it," the judge told them during the hearing.

The CCTV footage is much less equivocal: it shows a group of several dozen individuals coming running, immediately hitting and throwing projectiles, including a chair, towards the inside of the bar. However, the lawyer of the defendants, Hubert Hazera, believes that, if the six men did indeed "participate in this movement of violence", it was "without being the instigators". According to him, they would have "rushed into the heap" and "we must not lend them a political dimension". They would only be football supporters, belonging to the Ultramarines, without being affiliated with the ultra-left, nor with the anti-fascist movement.

On the side of the victims, Master Léon Ngako-Djeukam hammers however that it was a "savage, premeditated, organized attack" and even a "punitive expedition", carried out "surgically". The lawyer of Enguerrand O. deplores that "young people can no longer go to Bordeaux for a drink, because they have expressed a political opinion", simply by being identified candidates in elections, in the case of Pierre Le Camus. The latter's lawyer, David Dassa-Le Deist, tackles the six men, whom he describes as "salon antifascists", who came by the dozens to attack a group of only five or six individuals. The defendants now have ten days to appeal. The sixth alleged attacker, although his presence on the scene is attested that evening, recalls the judge, is released, for lack of "sufficient elements to characterize his involvement" in this attack.