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		</div><p>A 28-year-old man has been jailed for four months for slapping French President Emmanuel Macron in the face.</p>
<p>Damien Tarel was quickly arrested after the swipe that caught Mr Macron’s left cheek with an audible thwack on Tuesday, as the French leader was greeting a crowd.</p>
<p>The court in the south-eastern city of Valence convicted Tarel on Thursday on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority.</p>
<figure id="attachment_168788" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-168788" style="width: 880px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/DD8B2205-1378-4FCB-A47A-1C832441CA53.jpeg" alt="" width="880" height="577" class="size-full wp-image-168788" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-168788" class="wp-caption-text">Reporters wait outside the courtroom where Daniel Tarel was sentenced</figcaption></figure>
<p>He was sentenced to four months in prison and given an additional 14-month suspended sentence, and also banned from ever holding public office and from owning weapons for five years.</p>
<p>Tarel described himself as a right-wing or extreme-right “patriot” and member of the yellow vest economic protest movement that shook Mr Macron’s presidency in 2018 and 2019. He shouted a centuries-old royalist war cry as he hit Mr Macron.</p>
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<p>During Thursday’s trial, Tarel testified that the attack was impulsive and unplanned, and prompted by anger at France’s “decline”.</p>
<p>He sat straight and showed no emotion as he was sentenced but his girlfriend broke down in tears.</p>
<p>Poised and calm, he firmly defended his action and his views on Mr Macron, without providing details of what policies he wants France to change.</p>
<p>Tarel acknowledged hitting the president with a “rather violent” slap. “When I saw his friendly, lying look, I felt disgust, and I had a violent reaction,” he told the court. “It was an impulsive reaction… I was surprised myself by the violence.”</p>
<p>While he said he and his friends had considered bringing an egg or a cream pie to throw at the president, he said they dropped the idea and insisted that the slap was not pre-meditated.</p>
<p>“I think that Emmanuel Macron represents the decline of our country,” he said, without explaining what he meant.</p>
<p>He told investigators that he held right or ultra-right political convictions without being a member of a party or group, according to the prosecutor’s office.</p>
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<p>The slap called attention to an assortment of ultra-right groups bubbling beneath France’s political landscape, which are considered increasingly dangerous despite their small following.</p>
<p>Mr Macron would not comment on Thursday on the trial, but insisted that “nothing justifies violence in a democratic society, ever”.</p>
<p>“It’s not such a big deal to get a slap when you go toward a crowd to say hello to some people who were waiting for a long time,” he said in an interview with broadcaster BFM-TV. “We must not make that stupid and violent act more important than it is.”</p>
<p>At the same time, the president added “we must not make it banal, because anyone with public authority is entitled to respect”.</p>
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