French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin speaks during a press conference after the weekly cabinet meeting in Paris, February 1, 2023. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced Thursday, February 9 the banning of an evening entitled “Let them go back to Africa“, organized by “The Citadel», Headquarters of the ultra-right movement in Lille, whose mayor Martine Aubry has again called for the closure.
“This morning I asked the prefect of the North to ban this demonstration. This will be done todaysaid Gérald Darmanin during a visit to the North accompanied by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne.
“Patriotic Bar”
The minister was questioned about a tweet from Martine Aubry calling out to him: “Once again Génération Identitaire and the bar La Citadelle are organizing a racist evening. The next on February 24 “Let them go back to Africa!”. I ask Minister Gérald Darmanin and the prefect of the North once again to close the bar“.
“The evening of 24 at the racist bar La Citadelle will not take place, I promise“, also tweeted the LFI deputy from the North, David Guiraud. Christine Aubry, who has repeatedly called for the Citadel to be closed in recent years, reacted to the announcement by this private circle which presents itself as a “patriot bar” and an “house of identity“, of this evening “special“.
Read alsoGeneration identity dissolved: “Such a decision always has a political character”
Its title, posted on the site and the Facebook page of La Citadelle, takes up the declaration launched at the National Assembly on November 3 by the deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas. The parliamentarian had been sanctioned with an exclusion from the session for 15 days and the loss of half of his parliamentary allowance for two months, the heaviest possible disciplinary sanction.
Hosted by Aurélien Verhassel, figure of the ultra-right movement, ex-member of the dissolved group Génération identitaire and support for Eric Zemmour in the presidential election, La Citadelle made headlines in 2018, after the broadcast of an Al Jazeera report on the ultra right in Lille. Three men filmed with a hidden camera in this report, in particular in the premises of the Citadel, were then sentenced in December 2020 to suspended sentences of three to eight months in prison, in particular for the racist attack on a teenager. referred to as North African. One also mentioned a ramming attack on a “mosque» or against the market of the popular district of Wazemmes.
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