The defendants are accused of conspiring to carry out a series of terrorist attacks, including that of the French President
Thirteen people believed to be affiliated with the far-right group ‘Les Barjols’ (‘The Crazies’), the group accused of plotting to kill French President Emmanuel Macron, were put on trial in a Paris court on Monday. Three.
The defendants – 11 males and 2 females between the ages of 22 and 66 – have been charged with conspiring to commit an act of terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The trial is scheduled to end on February 3.
The trials follow a four-year investigation into the group, which is believed to have conspired to commit various acts of violence, including attacks on mosques, killings of migrants and even assassinated Macron at a public event commemorating the armistice in World War I, according to the indictment. None of these alleged schemes came to fruition and some of the initial charges against the suspects were dropped during the investigation.
“It was determined that the violent action plans devised by members of the Barjols group… were solely intended to seriously disrupt public order through intimidation or terrorism,” the indictment read.
The far-right Barjols group originally appeared on Facebook in 2017 and its alleged leader, Denis Collinet, was arrested in 2020. One of the suspects, Jean-Pierre Bouyer, 62 years old at the time, came into the sights of law enforcement after French domestic intelligence agencies received word of an impending attack on Macron.
Bouyer was arrested in November 2018 during a meeting with three close associates. A bulletproof vest and a ‘commando-style’ knife were seized. During additional searches, French police also seized guns and ammunition from Bouyer’s home.
While Bouyer initially admitted to the police that he wanted to “kill Macron,” implied that one of the accomplices would stab the president at the event, he later said that the discussions were just talk. “He admits that there were such discussions, but they never went any further.” Bouyer’s lawyer, Olivia Ronen, told AFP.
Collectively, the defendants’ legal team asserted that the prosecution’s case was well founded. “on the fiction that an act of violence will occur,” according to attorney Lucile Collot, who asserts that the allegations of a terrorist plot are indeed “misplaced.”
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