Four members of a neo-Nazi group appear from Monday before the assizes for plans of attacks in France in 2017 and 2018.
Four men from the neo-Nazi ultra-right movement appear from Monday June 19 to Friday June 30 before the special assize court competent in terrorism matters. A special assize court for minors, because one of the defendants was 17 at the time of the charges. The four accused, aged 21 to 28, are suspected of having prepared attacks in France in 2017 and 2018.
>> Handling of explosives, military training, Jean-Luc Mélenchon targeted … For the first time, four members of the ultra-right will be tried in June at the assizes of minors
The investigation started in the summer of 2018, after the arrest of Alexandre Gilet. This 22-year-old from Grenoble, of modest origins, a volunteer deputy gendarme who had previously served for six months in the army, has just bought products that go into the composition of explosive devices, such as TATP. The manager of the fireworks brand deemed the order suspicious and reported the transaction to the gendarmerie.
A group called “WaffenKraft”
By searching the home of this young man, the investigators found many long weapons and handguns, including two Kalashnikovs with 21 magazines, numerous ammunition, a grenade, laboratory equipment for producing explosives. A detailed analysis of the content of his computers and telephones reveals his belonging to the neo-Nazi movement, his frequentation of this environment on online discussion forums, in particular within a group called “WaffenKraft” (“power weapons” in German). Investigators also discovered 51 videos and hundreds of photos of training in the forest with homemade explosives. Alexandre Gilet admitted in police custody to having detonated, in particular, a kilo of black powder from a distance.
The prosecution maintains that this volunteer gendarme was the leader of the group. “He was the most radical and determined, he wanted to make a carnage worse than the Bataclan”, explained one of his co-defendants. On images found by the investigators, the four accused, arms slung over their shoulders, pose making the Hitler salute. They were taken during their only face-to-face meeting, in full, in the summer of 2018 for a weekend of training in the handling of weapons, in a forest near Tours (Indre-et-Loire).
Among their targets: mosques, Crif, Licra… and Jean-Luc Mélenchon
They mainly discussed on the internet: ideological exchanges against a backdrop of hatred of Muslims and communists, anti-Semitism and homophobia. It was also clearly a question of action plans against communities and personalities.
Among the targets envisaged: neighborhoods with large foreign communities, the Omar mosque in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a mosque in Creil (Oise), meetings of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), the European Parliament, the base aerial Villacoublay (Yvelines), premises of the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra), or even a meeting of the leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
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The latter as well as the Licra wish to bring civil action at the opening of the trial. The hearing must be held behind closed doors, one of the defendants being a minor at the material time. But the President of the Assize Court may decide to lift this restricted publicity, in the interest of the public and the information of all.
“white jihad” spirit
Alexandre Gilet had written a manifesto like Anders Breivik. On July 22, 2011, the far-right Norwegian terrorist detonated a bomb near government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people and then killing 69 others, mostly teenagers, when he opened fire on a prison camp. Labor Youth summer on Utoya Island. Just before carrying out his bloody attacks, Breivik published a violently Islamophobic and anti-Marxist 1,500-page manifesto on the internet, which had been drafted for years.
Alexandre Gilet had also written an act manifesto detailing the various possibilities of operations, in particular an attack with a ram truck. He had also started training as a truck driver. The accused admitted to having been at the time in the spirit of crusade, of revenge, after the jihadist attacks which mourned France in 2015, in the spirit of “white jihad” (white jihad). He assures us today that he would not have taken action and that he came out of this system of thought.
In this file, a fifth protagonist was prosecuted: a schoolboy who discussed the same group “WaffenKraft”. But he was tried in juvenile court last December and given a two-year suspended prison sentence.