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| - French prosecutors on Tuesday filed invasion of privacy charges against the girlfriend of a Russian activist who leaked a sex video that ensnared a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron. Alexandra de Taddeo, 29, was the recipient of the video that prompted the ruling party's Benjamin Griveaux to abruptly pull out of the running for mayor of Paris last week. She is charged with invasion of privacy and publishing images of a sexual nature without consent over the leaking of a video sent by Griveaux in 2018, which showed him masturbating, along with racy text messages. Pyotr Pavlensky, a Russian activist who was granted political asylum in France in 2017, has admitted to uploading the images onto a purpose-built website, saying he wanted to expose the "hypocrisy" of Griveaux, a married father of three. Pavlensky, 35, also risks charges over the affair that ended the campaign of the former government spokesman -- the first senior French politician to bow out of an election over a sex scandal. Pavlensky and de Taddeo were taken into custody in Paris on Saturday and questioned for two days. De Taddeo was released on Tuesday and ordered to refrain from contact with Pavlensky. Her lawyer Noemie Saidi-Cottier confirmed that her client had received the messages from Griveaux but denied that she had kept it with a view to using them against him. "She kept them to keep them," she said, adding that she was "not behind the publication of the images". Pavlensky, who was still being questioned Tuesday evening, is also being probed over a knife fight at a New Year's Eve party in Paris. Paris prosecutors have requested he remain in detention over that incident. The leaking of the video triggered an outpouring of sympathy for Griveaux in France, where politicians and the media have long dismissed sex scandals as private affairs. Pavlensky, who made global headlines in 2013 when he nailed his scrotum to Red Square in Moscow as a form of political protest, told AFP last week that he posted the video of a 42-year-old who had made families a core theme of his campaign. With just a month to go until the municipal elections, former health minister Agnes Buzyn was scrambled to take his place as the Paris mayoral candidate of Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) party. She faces a stiff challenge to oust the Socialist incumbent Anne Hidalgo -- Griveaux was already running in a distant third place before the video emerged. Pavlensky, who has a long record of radical protests, received asylum in France in 2017 after falling foul of Russian authorities. He was originally detained on Saturday on accusations he pulled a knife during a brawl at a party in Paris, before investigators shifted their focus to the leaked sex video. mch/cb/js/txw
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