France is putting on trial 13 members of a far-right group who planned to assassinate Macron

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The group, dubbed ‘Les Barjols’, also planned to attack mosques and immigrants, according to the Public Prosecution Service

Thirteen members of the far-right group ‘Les Barjols’ have been in the dock at the Paris criminal court since Tuesday for allegedly plotting several violent actions in France, including the assassination of the president, Emmanuel Macron. The extremists, who, according to the Public Prosecution Service, also planned to attack mosques and immigrants, are being tried for “bringing together 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 far-right identity, anti-immigrant and conspiracy theorist enthusiasts. The members considered themselves “patriots” and shared hatred against Muslims, Jews, immigrants and President Macron among themselves.

Denis Collinet, a former member of the far-right Front National party (nowadays called National Regroupment), opened this private Facebook group in 2017. Some members set up an association with that name in September 2018, after declaring it to the prefecture. The name of the group is “a nod” to the French army. The people of Mali called the Barjols the French legionnaires participating in the anti-jihadist operation Barkhane in the Sahel.

“Here action is the solution”, can be read in the presentation of this closed Facebook group that once had about 5,000 members and now about 1,900, although it has hardly been active lately. Its members, according to the French press, embrace the theory of the great replacement, which states that the white and Christian population is replaced by Muslim immigrants. This was popularized by the French writer Renaud Camus and more recently championed by the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.

According to the investigating judges, the suspects planned “violent actions” to “seriously disrupt public order only through intimidation or terror”. The far-right activists wanted to attack Macron and other members of the government “to overthrow the institutions by force”, attack mosques and kill immigrants “to change the government’s immigration policy”.

A tip put the French authorities on the trail of this little-known radical right-wing group. In November 2018, police arrested retired Jean-Pierre Bouyer and three of his alleged accomplices in the Moselle department in the east of the country. Bouyer, described by the French press as violent and racist, was one of the administrators of Barjols’ Facebook group. He wanted to recruit “real patriots” to defend citizens against the policies of Macron, whom he considered “a hysterical little dictator”.

According to the indictment, the 66-year-old Bouyer planned to stab the head of state in an act for the centenary of the armistice on November 11, 1918, which ended the First World War. To do this, he planned to use “a ceramic knife”, harder to detect, and approach Macron in the middle of the crowd. In his car, police found a knife, a military vest and a Bible.

Olivia Ronen, Bouyer’s lawyer, denies the allegations her client is accused of. “What they present to us as an attack project against the President of the Republic is actually the prelude to the movement of the ‘yellow vests’,” he assured, referring to the populist movement born in France at the time, which put the head of the Élysée during his first term in office with street protests, many of them violent, against the rise in fuel prices.

Gabriel Dumenil, defense lawyer, acknowledged before the trial that the defendants share “a rebellious view of the government” and that they make “sometimes extreme” statements. “But does that translate into a willingness to act and try against the life of the head of state? No,” says this lawyer.

The judges will have to determine in the course of the two weeks whether the trial will last, whether the defendants were just talking on social networks or whether they really came up with a more or less elaborate plan to assassinate the president of the republic , attacking immigrants or mosques If found guilty, the far-right could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. The trial is scheduled to end on February 3.

Source: La Verdad

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