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Parliamentary
aide among 11 arrested over killing of French far-right activist
Assistant
to hard-left parliamentarian among those held over fatal attack on 23-year-old
Quentin Deranque
Ashifa
Kassam European community affairs correspondent
Wed 18
Feb 2026 13.09 GMT
Eleven
suspects, including a parliamentary aide to France’s hard-left party, have been
arrested in connection with the killing last week of a far-right activist in an
incident that has shocked the country and laid bare its deep political
divisions.
Quentin
Deranque, 23, died on Saturday after sustaining a severe brain injury. The Lyon
prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said he had been “thrown to the ground and beaten by
at least six individuals” during an incident last week.
The
attack took place as Deranque, a mathematics student, was on the sidelines of a
protest against a university conference attended by Rima Hassan, a European
member of parliament for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing party, La France
Insoumise (LFI).
The
anti-immigration Némésis collective, which was protesting against the
conference, said at the weekend that Deranque had been there to protect its
members and was assaulted by anti-fascist activists. Hassan and other members
of LFI have condemned the killing.
The
incident has inflamed political tensions in France in the run-up to next
month’s municipal elections as well as the 2027 presidential race, in which
polls suggest the far-right National Rally (RN) could achieve its best result
to date.
The first
wave of arrests was announced late on Tuesday, as Dran said nine suspects had
been arrested. Those detained included people who were suspected of having
participated in the violence and others who had provided support to them,
sources told Agence France-Presse.
Hours
later, two more suspects were arrested: a man who the prosecutor said was
suspected of being directly linked to the violence as well as his partner, who
was suspected of trying to help him evade justice.
The LFI
politician Raphaël Arnault confirmed that his parliamentary assistant was among
those detained, adding the aide had “ceased all parliamentary work”.
On
Wednesday, as news of the arrests spread, the LFI said it had been forced to
evacuate its national headquarters. “The national headquarters of LFI have just
been evacuated following a bomb threat,” the party’s coordinator, Manuel
Bompard, said on social media. “Police services are on site. All employees and
activists are safe.”
As videos
of last week’s deadly confrontation continued to circulate on social media,
Mélenchon called for calm. “Let’s not fuel the incitement to take the law into
one’s own hands,” the LFI leader said on social media.
Images
broadcast by TF1 of the alleged attack showed several people hitting three
others who were lying on the ground, two of whom managed to escape. One witness
told AFP: “People were hitting each other with iron bars.”
Némésis,
the anti-immigration collective linked to Deranque, 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. La Jeune Garde – which was dissolved in
June – has denied any links to the “tragic events” and Arnault has called the
killing “horrific”.
While the
government has singled out LFI and La Jeune Garde, the Lyon prosecutor on
Monday declined to comment on those claims, instead telling reporters that the
investigation was looking into suspected “intentional homicide” and aggravated
assault.
Politicians
held a minute of silence on Tuesday afternoon at France’s national assembly in
memory of Deranque, while a march is expected to be held in Lyon next Saturday
in his honour.
In a post
this weekend, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, addressed the incident and
called for calm. “It is essential that the perpetrators of this ignominy be
prosecuted, brought to justice and convicted. Hatred that kills has no place
among us,” he wrote on social media. “I call for calm, restraint and respect.”
Agence
France-Presse contributed to this report
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