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French police have launched a murder inquiry after a far-right activist died in hospital having been beaten up in an attack that has fuelled political tensions in France.
Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old mathematics student, died from a severe brain injury at the weekend. The Lyon prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said Deranque was assaulted by at least six masked individuals. Police were working to identify suspects and no arrests had been made, Dran said.
Deranque was attacked on Thursday 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 Nemesis collective, which is close to the far right, was protesting against the conference. Nemesis said at the weekend that Deranque had been present to protect its members as security and was assaulted by anti-fascist activists.
Deranque’s family lawyer said in a statement to French media that the student appeared to have been ambushed by “organised and trained individuals, vastly superior in number and armed, some with their faces masked”. The lawyer told Le Monde that Deranque was not part of security for any organisation, had no criminal record and defended his political convictions “in a non-violent way”.
The death has inflamed political divisions in France ahead of municipal elections and next year’s presidential race. The LFI party, described by Mélenchon as “radical left”, was officially labelled as “far left” by the French interior ministry this month before the local elections in March. The LFI, as well as the Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, protested against this label.
On Monday, the government spokesperson Maud Bregeon accused the LFI of having “encouraged a climate of violence for years”. She told the broadcaster BFMTV that there was “therefore – in light of the political climate and the climate of violence – a moral responsibility on the part of LFI” for the attack on Thursday.
A video broadcast by TF1 of the alleged attack on Thursday showed a group of people hitting three others lying on the ground, two of whom managed to escape while one lay motionless. A witness told Agence France-Presse: “People were hitting each other with iron bars.”
Demonstrations called by the far right in memory of Deranque have taken place in the southern city of Montpellier and in Paris, where protesters unfurled a banner reading “antifa murderers, justice for Quentin”.
The LFI lawmaker Éric Coquerel, speaking to the public broadcaster Franceinfo, condemned “all political violence” and said the activists responsible for Hassan’s security “were in no way involved in what happened”.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media over the weekend: “It is essential that the perpetrators of this ignominy be prosecuted, brought to justice and convicted. Hatred that kills has no place among us. I call for calm, restraint and respect.”
