The authorities said Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after the death of three gendarmes in a hamlet of Puy-de-Dôme, that the killer was part of the survivalist movement.
Far from being the prerogative of a few marginalized people, this ideology had so far not targeted the police.
DECRYPTION
The day after the murder of three gendarmes by a madman, in the town of Saint-Just, in Puy-de-Dôme, the profile of the killer becomes clearer.
Wednesday afternoon, the public prosecutor of Clermont-Ferrand, Éric Maillaud, indicated that "hundreds and hundreds of cartridges" had been found and that the murderer was "perfectly experienced in the operation of weapons".
For the inhabitants of Saint-Just, he was a somewhat taciturn man, not very talkative but without fuss.
He was always dressed in army fatigues and jacket, with a reputation for owning a number of firearms.
"The cliché of the paranoid"
What the investigators discovered on Wednesday is much more worrying: Frédérik Limol, 48, had been practicing sports shooting for many years.
He was a very practicing Catholic, almost extremist, with a survivalist tendency, that is to say, convinced that the end of the world was near.
"
Survivalism is not at all an ideology reserved for a few marginalized
"
During the press conference organized on Wednesday afternoon, the public prosecutor explained that the man had done several internships within the survivalist movement, a growing ideology.
"We often have this cliché of the paranoid who awaits Armageddon in his bunker with a can of beans, but survivalism is not at all an ideology reserved for a few marginalized", analyzes Paul Conge, journalist at
Marianne
and author of the book
The Great-Replaced
(Arkhé editions).
Overarmed man
In this book, the journalist examines the defense mechanisms of individuals who feel themselves attacked in particular in their virility, such as survivalists: "Survivalists meet in groups, do survival courses, train in the handling of weapons ... There are dozens of such training camps in France, often during the summer. Some are close to the far right, but not all. "
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When investigators discovered his body on Wednesday morning, Frédérik Limol was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with a Glock automatic pistol and an AR15 assault rifle, an American weapon of war equipped with a torch from a silencer and a laser sighting device.
This over-armed man fired at the gendarmes just moments after their arrival on the scene, without them even having time to initiate any verbal exchange.
Fast and precise shots, identical to those of a sniper.
"It's extremely rare that we have survivalists, even radicals, ready to open fire on gendarmes", explains Paul Conge about this "carnage": "We are possibly beyond even the simple political ideology. "