Dozens detained as police break up banned Paris march

Paris police moved fast on Saturday, May 9, after France’s top administrative court let a ban stand on the annual Comité du 9-Mai march — a far-right gathering tied to the memory of Sébastien Deyzieu, a nationalist activist who died in 1994. The city had also banned an antifascist counterprotest. By the end of the day, 46 people were in custody, including three minors, after clashes and attempted gatherings around central Paris. (france24.com) ### What was supposed to happen? The Comité du 9-Mai planned its usual Paris procession, which every year draws scrutiny because past editions featured fascist symbols, Celtic crosses, and Nazi salutes. This year the Paris police prefecture banned the march in advance, arguing there was a serious risk of public disorder. Authorities also banned the antifascist response march, saying the two events together raised the odds of street violence. (rfi.fr) ### Why did the court matter so much? Because organizers challenged the ban, and the case went all the way up on an emergency basis. The Paris administrative court first upheld the prefecture’s order, then the Conseil d’État — basically France’s highest court for disputes with the administration — confirmed it on May 9. That gave police a very clear legal basis to stop the march before it could form. (actu.fr) ### So what happened on the ground? Even with the ban in place, people still showed up near the original starting point and in nearby streets. Paris police said 97 people were stopped in total, and 46 of them were placed in custody. The detainees came from both the ultra-right and the ultra-left fringes, which tells you this was not one cleanly contained crowd but a tense standoff between rival groups and a heavy police deployment. (ici.fr) ### What was the most alarming detail? Nine people were arrested near the initial departure point while carrying weapons. Reports described knives, batons, reinforced gloves, and other gear that looked less like protest equipment and more like fight preparation. That detail is doing a lot of work here — it helps explain why authorities treated the risk as immediate rather than hypothetical. (ouest-france.fr) ### Why is this march such a flashpoint? The Comité du 9-Mai is not just another protest organizer. It sits in France’s ultra-nationalist scene and stages a ritualized annual march around a martyr figure for that movement. Last year’s procession drew outrage because masked participants marched through Paris in a style many people read as openly neo-fascist. So by 2026, officials were not dealing with an abstract free-speech question — they were dealing with a recurring event already associated with extremist imagery and intimidation. (rfi.fr) ### Did the ban actually work? Partly. It stopped the authorized-looking march from taking shape, and police prevented a repeat of the big visual spectacle seen in earlier years. But bans do not make networks disappear. People still mobilized, some arrived armed, and police still had to make dozens of detentions. That is the catch with this kind of order — it can block the event, but not the underlying confrontation. (france24.com) ### What happens next? The immediate next step is legal, not symbolic. Custody cases will be sorted individually, especially for the nine people arrested with weapons. Politically, the episode adds pressure on French authorities to decide whether policing annual extremist demonstrations is enough, or whether they need broader action against the militant networks that keep reappearing around them. (france24.com) ### Bottom line? This was really a test of whether the French state could shut down a high-profile extremist march before it became a street show. On May 9, it mostly did. But the armed arrests and the custody numbers show the deeper problem is still there — organized fringes on both sides are willing to turn a banned rally into a confrontation anyway. (france24.com)