Gen Christian Piquemal was one of about 20 people detained at Calais rally in support of far-right Pegida group

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Police arrested a former commander of the French Foreign Legion at a banned anti-migrant rally in Calais.

Gen Christian Piquemal, 75, was one of about 20 protesters in the French port taken into custody on Saturday after addressing supporters of Pegida, a far-right group based in Germany.

Piquemal was charged with “taking part in a gathering which did not disperse after warning”. Four other men were charged with carrying illegal weapons including a taser gun, knuckle dusters and a knife.

The five will appear in court on Monday and face up to a year in prison if convicted. Pegida, which is opposed to what it claims is the “Islamisation of the west” through immigration, called for several rallies around Europe this weekend, including in Birmingham.

The French demonstration was outlawed by the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, under the government’s state of emergency powers, introduced after November’s Paris terror attacks.

Pegida's 'costly hate rallies' have no place in Birmingham, says MP Read more

Piquemal was head of the Foreign Legion from 1994-99. He was also deputy head of the military office for three Socialist prime ministers: Michel Rocard, Édith Cresson and Pierre Bérégovoy. Until two years ago he was president of the National Union of Parachutists.

During the demonstation there were chants of “this is our home”, “dictator state”, “journalist collaborators” and “migrants out”. Witnesses reported seeing Nazi salutes, according to Le Parisien.

Piquemal told a crowd of about 150 people, many with shaven heads, that he wanted to “prevent the decline of my country”.

Calais is home to the notorious “Jungle” camp where approximately 3,700 refugees and migrants are living in squalor in the hope of crossing the Channel and reaching the UK.

Étienne Desplanques, from the Calais public prosecutor’s office, justified the arrests saying the demonstrators were “ultra right, of a neo-Nazi type”.

“We deployed mobile forces around 100 or so demonstrators and carried out a series of arrests, around 20 in total,” he told journalists.

After the arrests, the MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, from the far-right Front National, tweeted her support for Piquemal: “Support General Piquemal: unfairly and brutally arrested at Calais.”

Thierry Mariani, of the centre-right Les Republicains party, protested in a tweet: “To see the police deployment to arrest General Piquemal and the passiveness of the state in face of the agitation by ‘No Borders’ disgusts me.”