Zürcher Nachrichten - French hard left reports 'bomb threat' after far-right activist killing

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.

"Police services are on site. All employees and activists are safe," he added.

The incident followed an update from the southeastern city of Lyon's prosecutor, Thierry Dran, on 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 aiding 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.

- Political divisions -

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.

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.

The centrist president however lost his majority in parliament, and the RN became the biggest party in the lower house.

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.

M.J.Baumann--NZN