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This Tuesday, January 17, 13 people belonging to an ultra-right movement were summoned to appear before a court in Paris for planning different terrorist acts in 2018 against democratic institutions in France and for wanting to attack migrant populations. Among its objectives was the French president, but none of the plans was put into operation.
Eleven men and two women appeared before the Criminal Court of Paris accused of the crime of “criminal association for the preparation of acts of terrorism”. Those indicated belong to the extreme right group ‘Barjols’ and the acts they planned were consistent with their radical ideology. According to the judicial investigation, this group had the intention of carrying out a coup against the democratic institutions of France, assassinating migrants and attacking mosques.
But within the purposes of ‘Barjols’, the one that most attracted the attention of the local media was the alleged plan to assassinate French President Emmanuel Macron at the World War I Armistice Centenary ceremony in November 2018. A date symbolic for France because it recalls the nation’s victory in the war and fuels the patriotism of many French citizens.
The mastermind behind the alleged assassination plan and ‘Barjols’ would be Jean-Pierre Bouyer, according to the authorities. Bouyer, a former mechanic in his sixties, was arrested on November 6, 2018, along with three other men close to the extreme right, when they were on their way to the house of one of them in Moselle.
Bouyer is originally from the town of Isere, in the south of France; However, on the day of his arrest, he was in the north of the country, near Paris, where Emmanuel Macron was going to celebrate the Armistice Centenary ceremony five days later. This deepened the suspicions of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), which had previously opened an anti-terrorist investigation against Jean-Pierre Bouyer and his ‘Barjols’ group.
At the time of Bouyer’s arrest, police found a “commando” dagger and a military vest. At his home, firearms and ammunition were seized. Hateful posts on Facebook also caught the attention of researchers. Bouyer urged “eliminate those who seek to harm other people” and pointed to the President of the Republic, whom he described as a “hysterical little dictator.”
Legal implications of the judicial investigation
After four years of investigation, the criminal classification of terrorism, initially proposed by the authorities, was abandoned. As none of the terrorist plans were carried out, the thirteen people arrested are charged with the crime of “criminal association with a view to preparing acts of terrorism”, punishable by 10 years in prison.
The penalty change was seen as a victory for the defense of Jean-Pierre Bouyer and ‘Barjols’. In addition, the defense lawyers see this change as evidence that the file and the judicial investigation against the defendants are fragile.
As for the specific plan to assassinate President Emmanuel Macron, there are conflicting versions. On the one hand, the court is based on conversations that Jean-Pierre Bouyer had with colleagues in police custody. Bouyer expressed having wanted to “kill Macron” and suggested to one of his co-defendants that he was going to carry out the assassination during “a crowd bath” with a sharp weapon. What the authorities identified as a clear reference to the event of the Centennial of the Armistice.
However, Me Olivia Ronen, Bouyer’s lawyer, told the AFP agency that her client “admits that it could have been a topic of discussion but assures that it was never more than that.” The attorney asked the court to put Bouyer’s words in context, who after her conversation backed down and pointed out that they were “just words.”
‘Barjols’ and the theory of the “great replacement”
The far-right movement ‘Barjols’ was created through the social network Facebook in 2017, the year in which the centrist Emmanuel Macron became president of the Republic. Its ideology is based on the controversial conspiracy theory of the “great replacement” in France, which defends the restoration of “patriotic values” supposedly lost and in decline due to the traditions established by migrants, mostly from Muslim countries.
With more than five million Muslims, constituting 8% of society, France is the country with the largest Muslim population in the European Union (EU). Figures that are explained by the history of colonization and French interventionism in the African continent and in Middle Eastern countries, such as Lebanon and Syria. Most of the migrants who arrived in France in the second half of the 20th century, after the Algerian War of Independence, come from North Africa, especially Algeria.
Some of these migrants were also Frenchmen who had not been born in the metropolis or mainland of France, but in the Algerian colony ruled by Paris. These migrants are known as ‘Pieds-noirs’ and one of them is the far-right journalist and former candidate for the French presidency, Eric Zemmour.
Zemmour participated in last year’s presidential elections at the head of his party named ‘Reconquista’, in reference to the theory of the supposed “great replacement” of the secular values of French society by the radical Islamism of the new generations of Muslim migrants.
Social discontent and extreme right
Just months after the inauguration of Emmanuel Macron as President of the Republic, the social climate entered into crisis. A rise in fuel prices during the summer of 2017 gave rise to widespread discontent that led to the founding act of the ‘Yellow Vests’. This anti-government protest movement is made up of various sectors from both the left and the right. However, the extreme right is gaining ground in some rural areas that are dissatisfied with the central power.
Also in Europe, neighboring countries of France, such as Germany, have also had a rise of the extreme right that is fed up with policies that they describe as “progressive and globalist” by recent center-left governments. The German authorities carried out raids at the end of 2022 in several cities in the country to dismantle a far-right terrorist network, which, like ‘Barjols’ in France, sought to attack democracy.
With AFP and local media
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