Chirac gunman in mental hospital

A neo-Nazi gunman accused of trying to kill French President Jacques Chirac was committed to a mental hospital yesterday as a stunned France worried about security gaps and the murky world of far-right groups.

Maxime Brunerie, the 25-year-old extremist overpowered after firing a .22 sporting rifle near the president during Sunday's Bastille Day parade in Paris, was transferred to a psychiatric unit at an undisclosed location for treatment.

Police said he admitted he hated Chirac and wanted to kill him "to save France" but was so incoherent that they considered him deranged rather than part of a serious plot.

The Paris prosecutor nonetheless launched an inquiry against Brunerie on the grounds of "attempted murder", assistant Paris prosecutor Francois Cordier told a news conference.

This clears the way for a judge to conduct an inquiry in far-right circles to confirm the loner theory. A court-appointed expert will determine whether Brunerie should be spared trial on the grounds that he was insane at the time of the shooting.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in London to meet his British counterpart Tony Blair, noted security risks came with high office and said: "I was deeply affected by this event."

Yesterday morning, Chirac called four members of public who overpowered Brunerie "to thank them for their intervention, their courage and their sang froid", his office said.

It was business as usual later as Chirac met Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who expressed his concern at the attack and said he was glad to see Chirac was unharmed.

The assassination bid was the first in France since the time of General Charles de Gaulle, who escaped three attacks in 1961-1962 by soldiers who opposed independence for Algeria.

The last assassination in Europe was the killing of maverick right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn in May.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy ordered a comprehensive police report on the attack within a week while police unions rushed to defend the 2,500 officers posted along the Champs Elysees avenue for the annual parade.

"There were certainly no mistakes, but there is no 100 per cent security," Andre Ventre of the Police Commissioners Union told LCI television.

Police said Brunerie belonged to a violent neo-Nazi movement called Group Union Defence (GUD). French television broadcast scenes of GUD members giving Hitler salutes, spraypainting swastikas on walls and rioting.

"He acted alone but he is probably heavily influenced by this subculture," Christophe Bourseiller, an expert on the extreme right in France, told LCI television.

Brunerie told police he had detailed his plan to friends who did not take him seriously, a judicial source said. Police questioned the gunman's sister yesterday and were due to talk to his parents, who were returning from a holiday in Spain.

French media reported Brunerie ran in municipal elections last year as a candidate of the far-right National Republican Movement (MNR), an offshoot of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front which stunned France by surging at the polls this spring.

The MNR promptly denied any role in the attack. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder sent Chirac a telegram expressing his outrage, a German government spokeswoman said. "The extreme right background to this atrocious act shows once again how seriously we must take this threat," it said.

Some Paris newspapers made the assassination bid their main story but others focused instead on the televised interview Chirac gave after the annual parade commemorating the 1789 French Revolution.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday that Chirac, when informed about the shooting, calmly responded: "Oh, really?" Chatting before his interview, Chirac told the three journalists it was not worth bringing up - so they didn't.

The attack recalled the best-selling novel "The Day of the Jackal", but British author Frederick Forsyth was quick to point out the differences between Brunerie and the fictional character in his book who tried to kill de Gaulle.

"This man was obviously a complete idiot," Forsyth told the Daily Telegraph. "He used a rifle in a public place - the worst possible thing he could have done."

Brunerie hid the rifle in a brown guitar case and took it out just as Chirac was passing in an open military car to descend the Champs Elysees at the head of the parade.

He was rapidly overpowered by bystanders, then thrown to the ground, handcuffed and led away by police - both uniformed and plainclothed - who were alerted by cries from onlookers standing opposite the Arc de Triomphe.

Chirac, who was about 100 to 150 metres away, did not hear the shot and kept waving to the crowd from his car.