Annie Bell, a 70-year-old woman running for the National Assembly (RN) in Mayenne and who qualified for the second round of legislative elections, was sentenced to prison in 1995 for the armed hostage-taking at the department’s town hall, local media reported on Tuesday.
The Ouest-France newspaper, whose report on the hostage-taking was shared on social media on Tuesday, dug into its archives to unearth the astonishing case, also covered at the time by AFP.
The shot has been fired
On January 5, 1995, Annie Bell and her husband kidnapped the secretary general of the Erne (Mayenne) town hall at gunpoint for three hours. The woman, who at the time went by her husband’s surname, Jaccoud, locked herself in the secretary general’s office “after a stampede.” The woman even fired a shot, which did not cause casualties, the gendarmes told AFP.
Also present was Annie Bell’s husband, a leather craftsman who was in “very serious financial trouble.” It took the intervention of the Mayenne chief of gendarmes to secure the hostage’s release after three hours of discussion.
Ten months in prison
According to Ouest-France and Courrier de la Mayenne, the couple were charged with “confinement with the use of weapons” and remanded in custody pending trial. Annie Bell was tried in June 1995 and sentenced to ten months in prison with 26 months suspended, the newspaper said, which “found no trace of a possible appeal” in its archives.
The RN candidate, 76, told Ouest-France she did not wish to speak on the issue “until after the elections”, while her party’s departmental MP Jean-Michel Cadenas replied: “We have no criminal record, therefore no case.” He did not respond to a question from AFP on Tuesday evening.
In response to a question from BFMTV, RN spokesman Philippe Ballard expressed surprise. “We will dig deeper,” he said. “If that’s true, she doesn’t have our support.”
Moreover, a dispute has already flared up in the department. Paule Veyre de Soras, who received 28.59% of the votes in the second round of the first electoral district of Mayenne, provoked ridicule and indignation by defending herself against racism by having “a Jew as an ophthalmologist” and “a Muslim as a dentist”.
“Strange human resource”
“I am devastated. I do not understand how a woman like her could represent the people of Mayenne in the National Assembly, much less France,” reacted Yannick Favennec, the outgoing MP for the 3rd constituency of Mayenne, who will face Annie Bell in a duel on Sunday under the Horizons label.
“I think RN has a strange human resource to find its candidates who do not correspond to the mandate they claim,” he added. He received 48.68% of the vote in the first round against 31.11% for his far-right opponent.
Source: Le Parisien
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