Which narrative and why should they care? Durov is a French citizen who has been arrested in France following a clearly legal action.
You will probably hear nothing from the judicial authorities during his garde à vue because one, it would serve no purpose, two, it's very rare to hear the judicial authorities make public statement in France especially for investigation which doesn't particularly interest the public and at this point the French public don't seem to care about the whole thing at all.
I expect Durov's lawyer to make a statement at some point during of after his garde à vue however once they know what he has been charged with.
True, but also maybe we can hold our horses a bit. There is an ongoing investigation. The story so far is that the French authorities arrested a French citizen.
If you are under the impression that there needs to be a public statement on that, I gotta disappoint you. Citizens are placed under arrest every day, and somehow there aren't press releases on that. Sure, Durov is an important public figure but I am not sure the French authorities have a habit to discuss an ongoing investigation with the press just so they can 'prevent rumors or shape the narrative'.
How I understand it, Telegram hosted publicly visible (read as 'non-encrypted') illegal content: drug ads/child pornography material, and failed or even declined to remove it. What is this attack on free speech here?
If they had end to end encrypted group chats, this content would have not been visible, hence nobody 'd have issued the takedown notice and Telegram would have had the plausible deniability. But right now things are clear as day: what we got here are repeated failures to comply to a takedown notice. Which is what the CEO has been arrested on.
We are talking about willingly and knowingly hosting illegal content and being a citizen of the country that issued the takedown notice. I don't see how this is an attack of free speech.