French Defence Minister Parly on Capitol siege: Democracies being weakened

French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the storming of the Capitol in Washington showed democracies around the world are "being questioned" and have been "weakened"

Speaking on Sunday to France Inter Radio, Parly said it was "great pain" to see "supporters of conspiracy theories" entering the US Congress and "trampling that emblem of democracy".

Rioters took over the House and Senate chambers, smashed windows and waved Donald Trump, American and Confederate flags on Wednesday.

By Saturday, prosecutors had filed 17 cases in federal district court and 40 others in the District of Columbia Superior Court for a variety of offences ranging from assaulting police officers to entering restricted areas of the US Capitol, stealing federal property and threatening lawmakers.

Parly said the challenge was "fighting this kind of ambient relativism that we all see, read about and that makes it so that everything is comparable, everything is always put on the same level, not just conspiracies."