PARIS: French police held a Russian activist and his girlfriend for questioning on Sunday over a sex tape released online that brought down President Emmanuel Macron’s favoured candidate for Paris mayor.

Pyotr Pavlensky has said he leaked the video that forced the centrist ruling party’s Benjamin Griveaux to bow out of the running for mayor in next month’s election.

The artist, who received asylum in France in 2017 after several radical protests in Russia, was arrested on Saturday in connection with a fight at a New Year’s party.

On Sunday, however, police turned their attention to the video posted online this week of a man masturbating, coupled with racy text messages sent to a woman.

The video prompted Griveaux, a married father of three, to abruptly call off his mayoral campaign, a first in France, where politicians have in the past attempted to brush off sex scandals as private matters.

Pavlensky’s French girlfriend, Alexandra de Taddeo, believed to have been the recipient of the video sent in 2018, has also been arrested on charges of invasion of privacy and publishing images of a sexual nature without consent.

Pavlensky, 35, and de Taddeo, 29, were both being questioned on Sunday at the headquarters of the criminal police in Paris.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2020