France Arrests Nine in Fatal Beating of Far-Right Activist

French authorities have arrested nine people, including a parliamentary assistant to a far-left lawmaker, in connection with the fatal beating of 23-year-old far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon last week. The arrests, announced by Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran, followed an investigation into the attack that left Deranque in a coma before he died in hospital on Saturday.

The incident occurred on Thursday outside the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon, known as Sciences Po, during a small protest by the far-right feminist collective Nemesis against a speech by Rima Hassan, a far-left member of the European Parliament affiliated with the France Unbowed (LFI) party. Deranque, a mathematics student and member of the nationalist group Allobroges Bourgoin, was providing security for the protesters when he was assaulted by a group of masked individuals. Witnesses described a chaotic clash involving iron bars, with video footage broadcast by TF1 showing about a dozen people striking three others on the ground, two of whom escaped.

According to a source close to the investigation cited by the AFP news agency, six of the detainees are suspected of directly participating in the...