France to Summon US Ambassador After Far-Right Killing

France plans to formally protest to Washington over US comments about the killing of a young far-right activist in Lyon, the Guardian reports. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he will summon US ambassador Charles Kushner after the US State Department's counterterrorism bureau and the US embassy in Paris posted on X that "violent radical leftism is on the rise" and framed the death of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque as evidence of a threat to public safety. Another senior US official, a State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy, wrote that the case showed "why we treat political violence—terrorism—so harshly." Barrot accused foreign actors of exploiting the killing "for political ends" and said France needed "no lessons" from the "international reactionary movement." Sources tell the AP Kushner has been asked to attend a Monday meeting.

Deranque died from head injuries after a fight on the sidelines of a Feb. 12 protest in Lyon against a politician from the hard-left France Unbowed party. Six men have been charged over his death, along with a parliamentary aide to a radical left MP, who faces complicity charges. More than 3,000 people marched in Lyon on Saturday in Deranque's memory, as authorities deployed large numbers of police to prevent further violence; President Emmanuel Macron appealed for calm. Comparisons in France have cast the case as the country's version of the killing of US far-right figure Charlie Kirk last year.

The incident has already stirred tensions beyond the US. Italy's right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a Trump ally, called Deranque's killing "a wound for all of Europe," prompting Macron to rebuke her for commenting on France's internal affairs, France24 reports. Barrot said he also intends to raise broader grievances with Kushner, including recent US sanctions on Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner who oversaw online content rules, and Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the International Criminal Court. He called the measures "unjustified" and an attack on both EU autonomy and judicial independence. Kushner was previously summoned by the French foreign ministry last August over a letter accusing France of failing to tackle antisemitism; he sent a representative rather than attending himself.