"OAS": the anti-terrorist prosecution requests a trial against a small ultra-right group

The national anti-terrorism prosecution finally requested a criminal trial for nine members of the ultra-right group dubbed OAS.

Dismantled in October 2017, the group aimed to "start a re-migration based on terror".

They are suspected of having wanted to attack Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Christophe Castaner and Muslims. 

Their small group was suspected of having wanted to attack Christophe Castaner, Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Muslims: the national anti-terrorism prosecution finally requested a criminal trial for nine members of the ultra-right group nicknamed OAS.

In its final indictment made Thursday, the Pnat asked that the suspects be tried for "terrorist criminal association", six before the criminal court and the other three, minors at the time of the facts, before the children's court, according to a judicial source .

The final decision now rests with the investigating judges within a month, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, Logan Nisin, being in pre-trial detention.

"I was only waiting for that", rejoiced to AFP Me Eric Bourlion, lawyer Logan Nisin, who has been in prison for four years awaiting trial.

"In the end, he is accused of an offense, it is a legal soufflé served too cold," he lambasted. 

The small group had been dismantled in October 2017. Logan Nisin, then aged 21, had been arrested a few months earlier, on June 28, 2017. Originally from Vitrolles (Bouches-du-Rhône) and a militant time in 2016 of the organization royalist Action Française, he admitted to investigators having founded a small group under the name of OAS, the same acronym as the Secret Army Organization, responsible for a bloody campaign against the independence of Algeria in the 1960s. The group aimed to "start a re-migration based on terror".

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He was suspected of having wanted to attack the former mayor of Forcalquier (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), Christophe Castaner, now president of the LREM group in the National Assembly and former Minister of the Interior , as well as to the leader of rebellious France Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Attacks against "kebabs" in Marseille or the "site of the great mosque of Vitrolles" had also been mentioned.

In front of the investigators, Logan Nisin had played down the scope of these threats, affirming that the group had abandoned these projects because they lacked "the capacity" to implement them.

To the glory of a killer 

With the "OAS" and a Facebook page to the glory of the Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Breivik (who killed 77 people in July 2011) of which he was the administrator, he wanted to make the "buzz" in nationalist circles and get "likes", he said.

Logan Nisin had also participated in the 2017 presidential and legislative campaigns of the National Front in his region.

The party assured that it had never been a member, however, and condemned its activities.

The case then took a political turn with the announcement of Jean-Luc Mélenchon to become a civil party, in view of the supposed threats against him, of which he says he was never informed.

But justice had finally refused him this status.

At least four other counterterrorism investigations linked to plans for violent ultra-right action have been underway since 2017.

A year after Logan Nisin's arrest, another small group suspected of wanting to strike Muslim targets had been dismantled.

In the fall of 2020, fifteen members or relatives of this group called Action des forces operational (AFO), tinged with extreme right-wing survivalism, were indicted in the investigation, which is continuing.

Since then, a small group, from a Facebook group nicknamed "Les Barjols" and accused of wanting to attempt the life of President Macron, was arrested in 2018.

Two other anti-terrorism investigations linked to the ultra-right concern, one on a group close to the neo-Nazi ideology suspected of targeting Jewish and Muslim places of worship, the other on a supremacist admirer of the author of the 2019 attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In 2016 Patrick Calvar, then head of internal intelligence, warned against a possible "confrontation between the ultra-right and the Muslim world", exacerbated by Islamist terrorism.