France’s hard-left party said it had to evacuate its national headquarters over a “bomb threat” Wednesday, as prosecutors confirmed 11 arrests over the fatal beating of a far-right activist last week blamed on the ultra left.
Quentin Deranque, 23, died after sustaining a severe brain injury when he was attacked by at least six people last week. The attack happened on the sidelines of a far-right protest against a hard-left politician speaking at a university in the southeastern city of Lyon.
The incident has fuelled tension between France’s far right and hard left ahead of municipal elections in March and the 2027 presidential race, in which the far-right National Rally (RN) party is seen as having its best chance yet at the top job.
“The national headquarters of LFI have just been evacuated following a bomb threat,” Manuel Bompard, party coordinator of the France Unbowed (LFI) party said on X Wednesday, before the building was declared safe.
LFI party members say they have received threatening messages since Deranque’s death.
“Since the tragedy in Lyon, I’ve been receiving a flood of racist insults and death threats,” said Lahouaria Addouche, who is running for mayor in Lille.
South of Paris, a 28-year-old far-right activist was arrested after social media threats, including of decapitation, against one Socialist and two LFI candidates, the prosecutor in the town of Auxerre said.
Parliament assistant fired
Earlier Wednesday, Lyon’s prosecutor, Thierry Dran, announced the latest arrests related to Deranque’s death.
A man suspected of having a direct link to the violence, and his partner, suspected of having helped him evade justice, were taken into custody as part of the investigation for “intentional homicide”, Dran said.
Six of the other detainees are suspected of having participated in the beating and three of having helped them, a source following the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
An assistant to Raphael Arnault, a member of parliament from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, was among the first four detained, the source said.
Arnault said he was firing the assistant.
An anti-immigration collective called Nemesis, which claims to fight violence against Western women, said Deranque had been at the protest in Lyon to protect its members.
Nemesis has blamed the killing on La Jeune Garde (Young Guard), an anti-fascist youth group co-founded by Arnault before he was elected to parliament.
‘Responsibility’
Jordan Bardella, who heads the RN, said after the arrests that the LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon had “moral and political responsibility” for what happened, claiming he had “opened the doors of the National Assembly to suspected murderers”.
While the government has singled out the LFI and La Jeune Garde, the Lyon prosecutor has declined to comment on those claims, only specifying the incident was being investigated as a voluntary homicide and aggravated assault.
Opinion polls put the far right in the lead for the presidency in 2027, when President Emmanuel Macron will have to step down after the maximum two consecutive terms in office.
A poll of 1,000 people published on Sunday placed Bardella as the preferred candidate in the 2027 vote.
In snap parliamentary polls in 2024, the left, including LFI, had allied against the far right.
Socialist lawmaker and former president Francois Hollande was the latest left-winger to reject another such arrangement with LFI on Wednesday.
“For municipal elections, there can be no alliance between the Socialists or parties of the reformist left and LFI in the second round, that’s clear,” he told broadcaster BFMTV.
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