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Joël Guerriau, a French senator with the centrist Horizons party, has been detained by police in Paris on suspicion that he drugged a female lawmaker in order to assault her, the public prosecutor’s office said Friday.
Answering a written question from POLITICO, the Paris public prosecutor’s office confirmed that Guerriau had been arrested on Wednesday evening, after an unnamed person filed a complaint against him for “administering to a person, without their knowledge, a substance which may alter their judgment or control over their actions in order to commit rape or sexual assault.”
The French senator is suspected of “administering ecstasy to a [female] guest, without her knowledge,” and ecstasy was found at his residence in a police raid, the prosecutor’s office said.
He remained in custody on Friday morning, and faces up to five years in prison and a €75,000 fine.
According to an official at the French Senate, who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential issue, the female guest is a sitting Member of Parliament, confirming multiple French media reports.
Guerriau’s lawyer, Rémi-Pierre Drai told French newswire Agence France-Presse that he would not give any information on the “substance” of the case “out of respect for my client and for the complainant.”
“We’re very far from the scabrous interpretation that can be deduced from reading the first press articles,” the lawyer added.
Guerriau, 66, is a senator from the western Loire-Atlantique district, where he was first elected in 2011.
In 2016, he filed a complaint after a magnified picture of a penis was published on his Twitter account. He then claimed his account had been hacked.
He is a member of the Horizons party, created by former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, and which is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s parliamentary coalition.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu, who is Horizons’ secretary-general, on Friday expressed “consternation and dismay” over the news in an appearance on public broadcaster France Inter.
If the allegations are accurate, “he obviously cannot stay on with the party,” Béchu said, adding the party’s politburo would assess the case at a meeting on Saturday morning.
Guerriau’s lawyer, Drai, was not immediately available for comment.
Sarah Paillou and Pauline de Saint Remy contributed reporting from Paris.
