Former Front National bodyguard quizzed on suspicion of selling guns to Paris terrorist

A former Front National (FN) bodyguard with links to the French extreme-Right has been arrested on suspicion of supplying weapons to one of the gunmen of the January Paris terror attacks.

Claude Hermant, 52, a former paratrooper, mercenary and ex-member of the FN’s shadowy security unit, DPS, was on Tuesday detained for police questioning with his female partner in Lille, northern France.

The case is potentially deeply embarrassing for the French police as Mr Hermant, a former boxing champion, claims he was an informant for gendarmes who allegedly turned a blind eye to his arms trade in exchange for tip-offs.

“The fact that one of the January terrorists (allegedly) procured part of his equipment from an extreme-Right activist more or less covered by the gendarmerie doesn’t look good,” wrote Marianne magazine.

“Remilitarised” guns that transited via a company Mr Hermant runs - reportedly an assault rifle and four Toukarev handguns - were found in the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Vincennes, eastern Paris where Amedy Coulibaly killed four on January 9, as well as in his flat in Gentilly, outside Paris.

Coulibaly, who was killed during a police assault, bought the weapons from an arms dealer in the Belgian city of Charleroi who has been linked to Mr Hermant.

In custody on separate charges of arms trafficking since late January, Mr Hermant is accused of illegally reconverting decommissioned weapons – some used as film props - from Slovenia to fire live ammunition and selling these on to collectors but also French gangsters.

The same type of reactivated arms are thought to have been used by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the gunman who killed 12 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine.

“In this type of trade, there are always middle-men,” a police source told La Voix du Nord. “In any case, it appears to show the porosity between certain Islamist and gangster circles.”

Mr Hermant is a well-known figure of the extreme Right in northern France, with reported links – although he denies this - to Bloc Indentitaire, an ultra-Right fringe blackballed by Marine Le Pen, leader of the FN. Her niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, however, accepted one member of the group on her electoral list, Philippe Vardon, for last Sunday’s regional elections.

Mr Hermant famously revealed the existence of the DPS, or Département Protéction et Sécurité - a secret paramilitary group inside the FN in the late 1990s. Its mission was to protect FN officials, conduct “intelligence” operations and “infiltrate and manipulate the enemy” – namely anti-racism groups or youth gangs in the French suburbs to foment unrest in the hope it would boost FN support.

A member for six years, Mr Hermant fell out with the FN after, he claims, being sent on a failed mercenary mission to Congo-Kinshasa that ended in him being jailed and later pardoned by president Denis Sassou N’Guesso. Furious at being abandoned by his FN masters, Mr Hermant went to the press about the party’s secret “Pretorian guard” in 2001.

Mr Hermant, who now runs a chip shop in Lille, has been in custody since January 23 on charges of “arms trafficking in an organised gang”.

After his arrest, his lawyer sent an email to the local paper La Voix du Nord dated last November, which he says he received from the police and proves he was helping them. It reads: “Hi Claude, we’ve talked to our superiors and we’re ok to go ahead with the two dossiers you presented to us (weapons-Charleroi…).”

His lawyer made it clear to Libération that he could provide more embarrassing information. “He can bend over backwards to help you, but if you’re not straight with him, hell remember,” he reportedly said.

Seven people have been placed under formal investigation in relation to the January attacks in Paris and six are in custody on charges of providing logistical support, weapons and vehicles to Coulibaly.

All, including Mr Hermant, deny any knowledge of his terrorist plans.