Four men are going on trial in Paris accused of conspiring as a neo-Nazi terrorist group to plan attacks on mosques and Jewish targets in France in 2017 and 2018.
An investigation was opened in 2018 after Alexandre Gilet, a 22-year-old volunteer deputy gendarme in Grenoble, allegedly ordered products that could be used in explosive devices. The manager of a fireworks shop found his order suspicious and contacted police.
A search of the man’s home found “regularly used” weapons, including two Kalashnikov assault rifles, and laboratory equipment.
Prosecutors say he and the three other accused were part of an ultra-right, neo-Nazi private online discussion forum called “Operation WaffenKraft”, where discussion “very quickly turned to the preparation of terrorist projects”. The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Nazis’ elite SS corps, which was founded by Adolf Hitler.
French media reported that investigators found pictures of the four men, one of whom was aged 17 at the time, taken when they had met face-to-face for the first time in summer 2018 for shooting practice in a forest near Tours. Investigators also found draft documents that they interpreted to be manifestos along the lines of those used to justify ultra-right mass killings.
One of the accused described the volunteer deputy gendarme as radical and determined, saying he wanted “to create worse carnage than the Bataclan”. This referred to the attack claimed by Islamic State that killed 90 people and injured scores more at a rock gig by the Eagles of Death Metal during coordinated attacks on Paris in November 2015.
The topic of the group’s online discussions is alleged to have included hatred of Muslims and communists as well as comments that were antisemitic and homophobic. Targets that were discussed allegedly included mixed neighbourhoods, a mosque, a meeting of a Jewish group, an airbase, the offices of the Licra association against racism and anti-semitism and a rally by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left party La France Insoumise.
The four men include a farm worker, as well as an engineering student who was the son of an army colonel.
The men’s lawyers are expected to argue in court that they would not have carried out any real attacks, nor had they written manifestos.
Nine planned attacks by ultra-right groups have been thwarted in France since 2017, the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said this spring, and the threat of attacks by ultra-right or neo-Nazi groups is being taken seriously by French authorities.
One of the accused was a teenager when police arrested the suspects in 2018 and 2019, which meant a closed-door trial for all four men was likely under French law.
But the presiding judge, Christophe Petiteau, said on Monday that given the seriousness of the allegations, “the court considers it important to lift the restricted publicity”.
