Five months of waiting for Taha Bouhafs. According to our information, the journalist-activist will finally be able to explain himself to France Insoumise (LFI), five months after the party pushed him to withdraw his candidacy from the legislative elections in the Rhône due to internal complaints of sexual violence.
Beyond the simple fact of being heard, Taha Bouhafs could become aware of specific elements of the file according to our information. “But we will not have the vocation at the end to say if he is guilty or innocent. It is the role of justice, not ours”, warns the LFI executive. For the moment, justice has not been done and the women involved have not filed a complaint.
“I don’t know what they accuse me of, they have never faced me with the accusations,” he had lamented Taha Bouhafs last July.
A very different first version
The decision to withdraw his candidacy was made official on May 10, a month before the first round of the legislative elections. Taha Bouhafs had justified his withdrawal by an “unprecedented storm of attacks” against him. What it is about, according to him: his conviction for public insult in 2020, after treating a trade union policeman from the “Arab service”. Criticism even came from his own field.
Within the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), Fabien Roussel had asked LFI to “review” his candidacy to “create the conditions to win” in the constituency. A way to highlight the candidacy of Michèle Picard, communist mayor of Venissieux (Rhône) to whom the activist had been preferred.
Initially, the rebels defended Taha Bouhafs tooth and nail. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for example, believed that he was the victim “of a mob that was fighting against him”. Change of tone the day after the withdrawal, on May 11, following revelations by BFMTV, according to which Taha Bouhafs is the target of an internal report for acts of sexual violence.
“An immediate political decision”
In question: the testimony of a young woman transmitted a few days earlier to the LFI Follow-up Committee against sexist and sexual violence. The latter recounts orally, then in writing, having been the victim of serious sexual acts by Taha Bouhafs. Shortly after, a second woman also made a complaint.
“Given the urgency of the legislative elections, we had to make an immediate political decision: not to investiture, or even parliamentary immunity, one of our members accused of serious crimes,” explains an executive of the party to BFMTV.
Taha Bouhafs called for “fair and equitable justice”, which would allow him to know what exactly he was “accused” of. The activist from the working-class neighborhoods had also questioned the LFI deputy Clémentine Autain, stating that the elected deputy had offered to announce that he was withdrawing her candidacy for the legislative elections “because of the racist attacks” and not because of the accusations. A version later denied by the main affected on the set of BFMTV.
Source: BFM TV
