This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Three French former skinheads are going on trial in connection with the death of a young anti-fascist campaigner which led to protests and the banning of three extreme-right groups.

The death in 2013 of Clément Méric, an 18-year-old politics student who had survived childhood leukaemia, shocked France and led to large demonstrations against what was seen as a resurgence of far-right and neo-Nazi groups.

In the wake of Méric’s death the government moved to ban three groups that it described as kinds of “private militias” which “provoked discrimination, hate and violence”.

Lawyers for Méric’s family say the student was deliberately attacked and that the incident was not merely a street brawl.

Esteban Morillo, 25, a security guard, and Samuel Dufour, 25, a baker, are accused of committing violence in a group and using a weapon – allegedly a knuckleduster. If convicted they could face up to 20 years in prison.

A third man, Alexandre Eyraud, is accused of violence against Méric’s friends and could face up to five years.

The defendants’ lawyers have argued that the men were acting in legitimate self-defence and that they were no longer skinheads or part of any group.

The altercation in June 2013 began at a private clothing sale in an apartment in central Paris where the main attraction was the British label Fred Perry, whose polo shirts were highly sought after in France by skinheads as well as leftwingers and mods. The event, on an invitation basis, attracted young people of all types.

A few hard-left anti-fascist activists at the sale rebuked a handful of skinheads who were wearing “white power” and “blood and honour” T-shirts. Outside on the street, in a busy shopping area behind Paris’s big department stores, the confrontation turned violent.

Méric sustained severe injuries from being beaten and he died in hospital the next day.

One of Méric’s friends from an anti-fascist group said Méric had not been violent but had “refused to lower his gaze”. The friend told AFP: “If Clément is dead it was because he was anti-fascist. This was a political murder, not a fight between gangs.”