Eleven ultra-right activists from the small group “Barjols” tried on appeal for a planned attack against Emmanuel Macron

At first instance, three members of the group created on the Facebook network in 2017 were found guilty of terrorist conspiracy and a fourth of illegal possession and sales of weapons.

Eleven of the thirteen members of the small ultra-right group known as “Barjols”, already tried in early 2023, will appear from Monday October 7 before the Paris Court of Appeal. They are suspected of having prepared a series of violent actions, including a planned attack against Emmanuel Macron. At the end of a month-long trial, which took place between January and February 2023, three members of the small ultra-right group, created on Facebook in 2017, were found guilty of terrorist criminal association and one fourth of possession and illegal sales of weapons. Nine others were released.

Three of the main defendants appealed this decision. For its part, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) appealed eight of the acquittals pronounced at first instance. During the first trial, the defense denounced a “judicial fiasco” or a “journey into absurdity” which would have dangerously extended the notion of terrorism by applying it to “13 Angry Men”whose only common point would have been “social poverty” and membership in “yellow vests”in full bloom at the time this affair broke out.

In 2017 and 2018, on the internet, on the phone or during meetings with paramilitary overtones, the suspects also allegedly plotted a “putsch”assassinations of migrants or attacks on mosques, according to the indictment. However, none of these projects were implemented. On October 31, 2018, an investigation was opened on the basis of intelligence information according to which an ultra-right activist, Jean-Pierre Bouyer, a former mechanic converted to logging in Gabon, planned to kill President Emmanuel Macron during commemorations of the centenary of the armistice of November 11, in eastern France.

On November 6, 2018, investigators arrested Jean-Pierre Bouyer and three other people. Weapons and ammunition were seized from the suspect’s home. In March 2020, Denis Collinet, the founder of the collective, a follower of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, was in turn arrested and indicted. After four years of investigation, the scope of the case was however reduced: the criminal classification, initially retained, was abandoned in favor of the offense of criminal association with a view to the preparation of acts of terrorism, punishable by ten years of imprisonment.