The request of one of the detainees for the crime of former Puma Aramburu before going to jail

On Wednesday, the French police arrested Romain Bouvier, the third suspect in the murder of former member of the Argentine rugby team Federico Martin Aramburu. The 31-year-old man appeared before a judge on Friday and was remanded in custody for murder and possession of weapons.

Bouvier, 30, will be investigated along with the other detainee identified as Loïk Le Priol, for having been one of the alleged shooters who attacked the former Argentine rugby early Saturday morning in the middle of Boulevard Saint-Germain, an exclusive area of Paris. Bouvier and Le Priol had allegedly moved in a jeep driven by Lison, a 24-year-old girl, who is also accused of “complicity in murder” and has already been placed in pre-trial detention.

Me Antoine Vey, Bouvier's lawyer, spoke to the French press and said that the only request they made was for their client to stay in an individual cell in order to “concentrate, remember the details and put the chronology in place”. At the same time, when it was time to appear, the accused chose not to answer the questions put to him: “On the advice of my lawyer, I wish to exercise my right to silence”.

It's not the first time this 31-year-old guy has been in trouble with the law. The French digital newspaper Mediapart explained that he and Le Priol frequented for several years a circle that brought together activists from the National Youth Front and the GUD (Union Defense Group), a union of French far-right students. In October 2015, Le Priol, Bouvier, and three other members of the GUD were accused of violently beating and humiliating a former union leader, forcing him to strip.

It is worth noting that both had to appear in court in June for another case in which they are being prosecuted for “aggravated violence” against a former president of the far-right group. In turn, he had also been sentenced in March 2017 to three months in prison, two of which were suspended for acts of violence when leaving a night establishment.

Despite all this background, Vey described his client as an intelligent and calm man: “I knew him in his youth, he was an upright and serene young man. He attended eloquence and wood competitions more than quite gifted.”

Authorities managed to find the suspect last Wednesday thanks to his credit card. While he was wanted by the police, he used the plastic in a hotel in Solesmes and then at an ATM. According to newspaper reports, he did not resist detention: “I was sitting quietly on a bench,” revealed the website L'Equipe.

The investigating judge on freedoms and detention (JLD) at the Palais de Justice in Paris decided to place him in pre-trial detention, as did the other two detainees, mainly because they were unable to seize weapons from the accused. This led to a “risk of repetition” and “disturbance of public order”.

On Saturday night, at the bridge of the Soul and behind the wheel of a Fiat 500, Lison, a 24-year-old third-year nutrition student, was arrested. Investigators claim that it was she who was driving the vehicle in which the two men who shot the bronze medalist at the 2007 Rugby World Cup were riding.

“I told the boys to leave. I didn't want it to happen like this. I acted by instinct and out of love,” the woman declared, in tears, before the judge. The accused of “complicity to murder” is being held in pre-trial detention in Versailles. “I told the boys not to fight. I'm so angry and sad for the victim,” she added. However, judicial sources said that he refused to provide investigators with access codes to his cell phone and computer equipment.

Loïk Le Priol, for his part, was in the border town of Zahony, in a sector where the boundaries of Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine cross. “The foreigner told the police that he had military training and would have gone to Ukraine to fight,” said the Hungarian police. The man was arrested more than 72 hours after the incident some 1800 kilometers from that French city. As a result of what was found in his car, he was “sued for misuse of a device that is particularly dangerous for public safety.”

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