Russian activist, girlfriend held after leaked sex videos that ended Macron ally's campaign

French police held a Russian activist and his girlfriend for interrogation after the former claimed he released sex videos that brought down President Emmanuel Macron's favoured candidate for Paris mayor.

The artist was arrested on Saturday in connection with a fight at a New Year's party.

Pyotr Pavlensky, who received asylum in France in 2017 after his radical protests in Russia, leaked screenshots of an online chat in which centrist ruling party's Benjamin Griveaux was allegedly sexting a woman. Pavlensky also said that the woman was not Griveaux's wife.

Pavlensky's French girlfriend, Alexandra de Taddeo, believed to be the recipient of the videos sent in 2018.

Police, on Sunday, however, turned their attention to the video released this week online that showed a man masturbating, and racy messages sent to a woman.

The videos led to Griveaux abruptly calling off his campaign, a first in France, where politicians in the past tried to brush off sex scandals as private matters.

French politicians, cutting across party lines, also denounced the leak of the videos, which many believe is an unacceptable Americanisation of politics in France. French media has also criticized the act.

"Everyone has the right to their secret garden," the speaker of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, told the Journal du Dimanche weekly.

Taddeo has also been arrested on the grounds of invasion of privacy and publishing sexual content without consent.

On Friday, Pavlensky said that he leaked the video in order to expose the "hypocrisy" of 42-year-old Griveaux and intended to post similar videos to expose the newly created "political porn platform".

Griveaux "is someone who constantly brings up family values, who says he wants to be the mayor of families and always cites his wife and children as an example. But he is doing the opposite," Pavlensky had said.

After Griveaux's pull out, French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn run from Macron's party for the post of mayor.

(with inputs of AFP and Reuters)