Prosecutors say seven of the 11 suspects are being investigated for murder and the other four for helping others to evade police.
Favrot’s lawyer told reporters his client admitted being at the scene and committing violence but said “he wasn’t the one who inflicted the blows that caused Mr Deranque’s death”.
Although the radical left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has sought to distance the party from Deranque’s violent death, LFI has come under attack from rivals across the political spectrum, less than a month before France votes in key municipal elections.
Government spokesperson Maud Bregeon has urged the party to suspend Raphaël Arnault from its parliamentary group because of the MP’s links to Anti-Fascist Young Guard, which has been blamed for the violence a short distance from Sciences Po University in Lyon.
The political climate is febrile ahead of the March votes – seen as the last test of public opinion before next year’s presidential elections. Within the past month Sébastien Lecornu’s minority government had to survive two no-confidence motions to push through this year’s budget.
LFI party co-ordinator Manuel Bompard announced on Wednesday that the party’s Paris HQ was briefly evacuated because of a bomb threat, and went on to accuse a large cross-section of the political and media classes of making days of false and defamatory statements.
“I call for an end to this absolutely despicable exploitation of the tragedy that took place last Thursday evening in Lyon, for which France Unbowed bears absolutely no responsibility,” he told reporters. “This climate should worry everybody.”
