The group, called ‘Les Barjols’, also intended to attack mosques and immigrants, according to the Prosecutor’s Office
Thirteen members of the far-right group ‘Les Barjols’ have been sitting in the dock since Tuesday in the Paris Correctional Court for allegedly planning several violent actions in France, including assassinating the president, Emmanuel Macron. The extremists, who according to the Prosecutor’s Office also intended to attack mosques and immigrants, are being tried for “association of criminals for the purpose of preparing terrorist acts.”
The thirteen defendants are eleven French men and two women between the ages of 26 and 66. They belong to ‘Les Barjols’, a small group of extreme right-wing identity, anti-immigrant and lover of conspiracy theories. Its members considered themselves “patriots” and shared among themselves hatred of Muslims, Jews, immigrants and President Macron.
Denis Collinet, a former member of the far-right National Front party (today called National Regroupment), opened this private Facebook group in 2017. Some of its members created an association with that name in September 2018, after declaring it before the prefecture. The name of the group is “a nod” to the French military. The inhabitants of Mali called the Barjols the French legionnaires who participate in the anti-jihadist operation Barkhane in the Sahel.
“Here, action is the solution”, can still be read in the presentation of this private Facebook group that once had around 5,000 members and now has around 1,900, although lately it has hardly been active. Its members embrace, according to the French press, the theory of the great replacement, which maintains that the white and Christian population is being replaced by Muslim immigrants. This was popularized by the French writer Renaud Camus and more recently defended by the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
According to the investigating judges, the defendants planned “violent actions” to “exclusively seriously disturb public order by intimidation or terror.” The ultra-rightists wanted to attack Macron and other members of the Government “in order to overthrow the institutions by force”, attack mosques and kill immigrants “in order to modify the government’s policy” on immigration.
A tip-off put the French authorities on the trail of this little-known radical far-right group. In November 2018, the Police arrested the retired Jean-Pierre Bouyer and three of his alleged accomplices in the Moselle, a department in the east of the country. Bouyer, described by the French press as violent and racist, was one of the administrators of the Barjols’ Facebook group. He wanted to recruit “true patriots” to defend citizens from the policies of Macron, whom he considered “a hysterical little dictator.”
According to the indictment, Bouyer, 66, planned to stab the head of state during an act for the centenary of the armistice on November 11, 1918, which ended the First World War. For this he intended to use “a ceramic knife”, more difficult to detect, and approach Macron in the middle of the crowd. In his car, the police found a knife, a military vest and a bible.
“A contested view”
Olivia Ronen, Bouyer’s attorney, denies the charges her client is accused of. “What they present to us as a project of attack against the President of the Republic is actually the prelude to the movement of the ‘yellow vests'”, he assured, referring to the populist movement that was born at that time in France and that put the head of the Élysée during his first term with protests in the streets, many of them violent, against the rise in fuel prices.
Gabriel Dumenil, defense lawyer, acknowledged before the start of the trial that the defendants share “a rebellious vision of the Government” and that they make “sometimes extreme” statements. «But does that translate into a willingness to act and attempt against the life of the head of state? No, “says this lawyer.
The judges will have to determine over the two weeks that the trial will last if the defendants were just talking on social networks or if they had really concocted a plan, more or less elaborate, to kill the President of the Republic, attack immigrants or attacking mosques If found guilty, the ultra-rightists could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. The process is scheduled to end on February 3.
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