The entire population of Saint-Ferdinand, in Centre-du-Québec, was amazed yesterday to see the RCMP’s heavy artillery land in its small municipality of barely 2,000 citizens for an anti-terrorist operation linked to the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen.
These heavy words echoed strangely in two seemingly peaceful areas.
Several neighbors were surprised to see the heavily armed Tactical Intervention Group (GTI) appear for the first time. The investigation would have started two years ago.
“I thought it was abandoned. It was ghost. Nothing was happening there. We are in the middle of nowhere here,” says Stéphane Daigle, a resident of the area.
Two searches were carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), in Saint-Ferdinand but also in a dwelling in Plessisville, about twenty kilometers away.
Photo QMI Agency, Frédéric Marcoux
RCMP officers also conducted a search on rue de la Coopérative, in Plessisville.
Investigators from the integrated national security team thus searched a dwelling on rue de la Coopérative, in Plessisville, as well as an old school, which had been abandoned for decades, which is behind the church on route de Vianney, in Saint Ferdinand.
Photo by Jean-Francois Racine
The most important excavation takes place in a dilapidated old school where at least one person still lives, in Saint-Ferdinand.
Mysterious
“It’s run down but I think a woman lives there. She talks to the trees. Apart from his goats that roam everywhere, there is nothing,” adds Ghislain Simoneau, also surprised.
“She was always alone. We haven’t been there for ten years. We wanted to help him at first but we never spoke to each other again. I thought she was a conspirator, ”said a somewhat fearful neighbor.
In total, some sixty RCMP officers carried out this vast anti-terrorist operation.
Photo QMI AGENCY, Frédéric Marcoux
Most of the police concentrated their efforts in Saint-Ferdinand, in particular because of the size of the building to be searched.
Photo taken from Twitter, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Photo by Jean-Francois Racine
Listen to Alexandre Moranville-Ouellet’s news tour at the microphone of Benoît Dutrizac on QUB Radio:
“I first thought of a synthetic drug laboratory but I didn’t expect that at all. It’s a bit surreal,” said Yves Charlebois, mayor of Saint-Ferdinand.
Photo by Jean-Francois Racine
According to him, the place has been inhabited for ten years by a woman of Brazilian origin and her adult son. Nothing abnormal was noted by anyone.
“We are carrying out the two searches and, according to the evidence that we will have collected, it is possible that there are other police actions. At no time was the population in danger,” said Corporal Tasha Adams.
No arrest
No arrests had been made by mid-afternoon.
A month and a half ago, a 19-year-old Ontarian, Seth Bertrand, was arrested in Windsor in connection with a similar investigation.
He faces charges for contributing to or participating in the activities of a terrorist group and committing hate-motivated offences.
national security
RCMP investigations target crimes that are federal in nature or national and international in scope. They cover several areas: national and border security, financial integrity and organized crime.
In 2021, the RCMP also intervened to arrest a man from L’Ancienne-Lorette in possession of an impressive arsenal as well as several homemade bombs.
– With the collaboration of Roxane Trudel, Laurent Lavoie and Agence QMI
Atomwaffen – nuclear weapons in German – is an extremist group with neo-Nazi allegiances.
- The group was created in the United States in 2015, then officially disbanded in 2019. Some scattered cells may have persisted.
- Its members are “accelerationists” and believe that society is irreparably corrupt, to the point where it would have to be destroyed to rebuild it in their ideal, dominated by whites.
- Atomwaffen targets racial, ethnic and religious groups, according to Public Safety Canada, which has considered it a terrorist entity since 2021.
- At least 5 murders and several acts of vandalism against minorities have been attributed to the organization in the United States, according to Vice-News.
- One of the group’s members killed a 19-year-old Jewish gay man in 2018 after he participated in a “hate camp”.
- In May, a young Ontario man was arrested for various heinous offenses after he “submitted an online application to join the terrorist entity”.
- “The group encourages violence to hasten the coming of this civil war or catastrophe that would destroy society as we know it. They promote methods of terrorist action for their existence,” explains Louis Audet Gosselin, from the Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence.
— Text and research: Roxane Trudel