The Head of State had been targeted by a planned attack by the “Barjols“, a group close to the extreme right identity.
The anti-terrorist investigating judges in charge of the investigation into the “Barjols“, a group close to the far right identity suspected of having planned an attack against Emmanuel Macron in 2018, ordered a criminal trial for 13 people, AFP learned on Wednesday from a source familiar with the matter.
These eleven men and two women will be tried in Paris for the offense of criminal association with a view to preparing acts of terrorism. The trial is scheduled between January 17 and February 2. The judicial investigation was opened shortly after the arrest on November 6, 2018 of several sympathizers of the radical far right.
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The investigations then led to the indictment of 14 people in total, for criminal terrorist association, liable to assizes. But after nearly four years of investigation, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office had requested a reclassification of the facts so that twelve people could be tried for criminal association with criminal terrorists, an offense tried before the criminal court, and requested a dismissal. for two other people.
Finally, the investigating judges decided to refer thirteen people to the correctional court and ordered the abandonment of the proceedings for the fourteenth. In their order dated November 8, of which AFP has knowledge, the magistrates emphasize that “it has been established that the plans for violent action conceived by the members of the Barjols group … were aimed exclusively at seriously disturbing public order through intimidation or terror“.
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And this, on the one hand,by carrying out violent actions against the Head of State and members of the government in order to overthrow the institutions by force and on the other hand by targeting symbolic places such as mosques or specific groups such as migrants to influence government policy“.
The investigators had decided to intervene after learning of the displacement of one of the administrators of the Facebook group, Jean-Pierre Bouyer, a retiree from Isère, in the east of France where Emmanuel Macron was for his memorial journey on the centenary of the end of the Great War. In a conversation intercepted by the police, this pensioner had mentioned the idea of attacking the head of state with a ceramic knife, which cannot be detected by security checks. In the vehicle with which he had gone to Moselle had been discovered in particular a dagger in its case and a Bible.
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