(Picture: Getty Images)

On Sunday, Ukip leader Nigel Farage was reported as fearing he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt after the wheel came off his car on a French motorway.

Mr Farage, who said he has received numerous death threats during his tenure as Ukip leader, was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying that mechanics had told him they had never seen the nuts on all four wheels of a car come loose at once, and were ‘absolutely certain of foul play’.

The mechanics claim this conversation did not take place.

Speaking to Libération, the mechanic that rescued Mr Farage and the prosecutor who would have been in charge of any investigation both denied ever suspecting any foul play.




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A computer generated image recreates the crash

Philip Marquis, owner of the garage that fixed Mr Farage’s Volvo, said that it wasn’t until they reached the garage in Marck that they noticed the nuts were loose. And though Mr Marquis did say he had ‘never seen anything like it’, he added that he believed the nuts to have been wrongly screwed on after another repair and did not suspect any sort of sabotage.

Mr Marquis says that the reason he knows for certain that no one told Mr Farage about any sabotage is because neither he nor his employees speak any English.

‘We had to talk in sign language,’ he said.

Libération further reports that no witness vouches for Mr Farage’s reported account and the police didn’t mention any sabotage either. A source said police arrived at the accident, but found no one hurt and so did not examine the car.

‘Hence they could not suspect anything.’

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(Picture: Getty Images)

‘If they had noticed a sabotage, they would have had to open an investigation,’ the Dunkirk prosecutor who would have led any investigation said.

Under French law, the prosecutor would have had to open an investigation even if Mr Farage didn’t ask for a police inquiry.

‘Mr Farage was clearly dishonest when he says this assumption [the alleged assassination attempt] is based on what the mechanics and the police allegedly told him,’ Libération concludes.

‘Not only did they not say anything, but they did not even suspect a thing.’

Speaking to metro.co.uk, Mr Farage said he had ‘no desire for this story [the initial report of the accident] to come out.’

‘I never mentioned any mechanic. As far as I’m concerned, this is a dead story,’ he said.

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