Leader of French anti-Muslim group suspected of plots released

Leader of French anti-Muslim group suspected of plots released
The retired police officer had been arrested along with nine other people by anti-terror police in June in an operation that spanned France, including the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

3 min read
04 July, 2018
The French gang has been accused of criminal conspiracy [Getty]
The suspected head of a radical far right group feared to have been planning attacks against Muslims has been released on bail, French judicial sources said on Tuesday.

The retired police officer, named as  Guy S., had been arrested along with nine other people by anti-terror police in June in an operation that spanned France, including the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

He was released on Friday along with another member, bringing the total on bail to six, a judicial source told AFP. Four remain in custody while the case continues.

The gang, suspected of belonging to the Action des Forces Operationnelles (Operational Forces Action), have been accused of criminal conspiracy. 

The suspects had an "ill-defined plan to commit a violent act targeting people of the Muslim faith," one source close to the probe said.

According to preliminary investigations, they were allegedly planing an attack on Muslims leaving prison or 'radical' mosques. 

The suspects were being monitored by France's DGSI intelligence agency, which intercepted messages showing they were seeking to buy arms, and searches turned up some weapons, the sources said.

France has been hit by a string of jihadist attacks since early 2015, often by people who have become radicalised or claim to have acted in the name of the Islamic State group.

More than 240 people have been killed in the attacks, including 130 who lost their lives in a wave of bombings and shootings mainly in  Paris nightspots in November 2015.

France is home to an estimated 5.7 million Muslims or almost nine percent of the population, according to a report by US-based think-tank the Pew Research Centre at the end of last year.

False flag

Islamophobia has increased dramatically in Europe since the Syrian conflict triggered the world’s biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. 

In May last year, two German soldiers who posed as Syrian migrants to plot the false-flag assassination of pro-refugee politicians were detained by police.

The suspect, identified only as Maximilian T., aged 27, was detained from the same Franco-German army base near Strasbourg where his co-conspirator, Franco Albrecht, was also stationed.

Albrecht, 28, was arrested on 26 April for his part in planning the false-flag shooting attack against pro-immigration politicians, which the pair had intended to blame on Muslim migrants and refugees.

He had posed as a fruit-vendor from Damascus to register as a Syrian refugee, despite speaking no Arabic, and was granted a space in a shelter and monthly benefits.

The pair had drawn up a list of pro-refugee politicians to kill, including former German President Joachim Gauck and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

Albrecht was set to carry out the attack while Maxilimilian T., who served in the same infantry battalion, created the death list and helped procure a French-made handgun from Vienna.

Another man, 24-year-old student Mathias F, was also arrested for planning the murder, which the group had hoped would "be seen by the population as a radical Islamist terrorist act committed by a recognised refugee", prosecutors said.

Both Maximilian and Albrecht were part of online far-right extremist chat groups, while it has emerged that the latter expressed extremist views in a 2014 master's thesis which theorised that immigration would end Western civilisation.