Eleven men and two women belonging to the ultra-right are tried from this Tuesday suspected of having prepared violent actions, in particular an attack against the President of the Republic in 2018.
Are they the embodiment of ultra-right figures ready to take action to overthrow the state? Or angry racist individuals on the fringes of the yellow vest movement? The Paris Criminal Court is judging from this Tuesday 13 people suspected of having prepared violent actions and in particular a plan to attack in November 2018 against the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron.
For a week at the beginning of November 2018, the latter carried out a series of trips and commemorations in the East of France on the occasion of the Centenary of the Armistice of the Great War. It was during one of these visits that the defendants, tried today for “association of terrorist criminals”, had imagined attacking the head of state.
As he admitted to the police, Mickaël Iber, one of the defendants, said during a meeting about the president:
“I take him by the hand, I shoot, and tac tac and I use a knife.”
Knife attack
Jean-Paul Bouyer, another defendant, who confirms this sentence, had submitted to him the idea of using a ceramic knife, which is more difficult to spot. At the time, the man was 62 years old, ex-manager of a garage converted into a director of logging in Gabon, who participated in survivalism courses to train in combat. He is very active and very followed on social networks, posts hateful messages against the President of the Republic, whom he describes as a “little clown”.
“You must be the predator who must eliminate the one or those who seek to harm you. This is the case nowadays with this little clown”, he wrote on Facebook on October 16, 2018.
Jean-Paul Bouyer and three other men were arrested on November 6, 2018 in Bouzonville, Moselle, at the home of one of them. The day before, the sexagenarian had left Isère where he resides to join the East of France. At that time, the intelligence services, alerted for a few days, fear an imminent action.
A dagger with a blade of 15 centimeters and a military vest are also found in the vehicle used by Bouyer. The four suspects admit to having raised the idea of killing the president the night before, but assure that nothing had been planned.
“He admits that it could have been a subject of discussion, but assures that it was never more than that”, indicates to AFP his lawyer Olivia Ronen, who regrets that the investigation “‘forgot’ to replace “his client’s anti-Macron remarks” in the context of the time”.
Coup and attacks on mosques
This first wave of arrests will continue. The investigation will update a nebula of individuals belonging to the ultra-right and the identity group the “Barjols” to which Jean-Paul Bouyer belonged. He had left him some time before his arrest. On March 13, 2020, Denis Collinet was also arrested. He is, in his own words, the founder of this group adept at the theory of the “great replacement” and paramilitary training.
Several projects were discussed during secret meetings where the participants are in military uniform and take pictures of themselves, in particular burning European flags. Among these: coup d’etat with 500 Russian soldiers going to the Élysée, kidnapping of deputies, sequestration of the personnel of a refinery…
For the investigators, a rally organized near Vigy (Moselle) at the end of 2017 appears to be the “high point of the preparation of violent actions by the members of the group” and in which eight of the thirteen defendants participated. On this occasion, it is mentioned to attack mosques. Jean-Paul Bouyer also mentioned in police custody his fear of an “Islamization of France and the establishment of sharia”.
“Excessive talk”
According to the instruction, “it is established that the projects of violent action conceived by the members of the Barjols group (…) were aimed exclusively at seriously disturbing public order through intimidation or terror on the one hand in carrying out violent actions against the Head of State and members of the government in order to overthrow the institutions in place by force and on the other hand by targeting symbolic places such as mosques (…)”.
For the defense, these statements must be understood in an extremely tense social climate with the launch of the yellow vests movement. After four years of investigation, the criminal qualification has also been abandoned.
“There is not the beginning of a material act, nothing has ever been planned, there is no tracking, no plan”, estimates with BFMTV.com Me Gabriel Dumenil, who defends with Me Lucile Collot, one of the defendants.
And to add: “One of the questions in this trial is whether there is a terrorist agreement, continues the council. Quite frankly, no. There are people who have anger between them and excessive remarks. In this file, my client only knows one person, he found himself in a case that is beyond him.”
