A FORMER top security aide for French President Emmanuel Macron was charged yesterday along with an employee of the ruling party after they were caught on video assaulting May Day protesters, footage that went viral on social media.

In the most damaging scandal to hit Macron since he took office last year, Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase were charged with “gang violence”, Paris prosecutors said.

Three high-ranking police officers, already suspended on suspicion they illegally gave Benalla video surveillance footage of the incidents to help him try to clear his name, were charged with misappropriation of the images and violating professional secrecy.

The president has yet to comment publicly on the scandal. But after a meeting of top government ministers at the Elysee late yesterday, a close aide said Macron considers the facts in Benalla’s case as “unacceptable”.

The source added that Macron will speak out about the matter “when he thinks it necessary” and that he promised it “had not been and will not be treated with impunity”. 

Benalla was punished in May with a two-week suspension from active duty, the president’s office said. Yet Benalla continued to appear in Macron’s security details.

The opposition accuses Macron, who came to power on pledges to restore transparency and integrity to the nation’s highest office in order to ensure a “republic of responsibility”, of covering up for Benalla.

Benalla, 26, was fired on Friday after video footage emerged showing him hitting a man at least twice as riot police looked on while breaking up a May Day protest in Paris.

Benalla, who was wearing a police helmet with visor as well as a police armband, was additionally charged with impersonating a police officer, as well as complicity in the unauthorised use of surveillance footage.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb is to appear before parliament today, with some MPs warning they will demand his resignation if he knew about the incident but kept quiet. – AFP, July 23, 2018.