Six former members of the ultra-right group the Organization of Social Armies (OAS), including their self-proclaimed young leader Logan Nisin, are on trial for plans for terrorist attacks from Tuesday in Paris.

They wanted to "start the 'remigration' based on terror."

Their envisaged targets: Muslims, Arabs, black people… or even Christophe Castaner, then spokesperson for the Macronist government, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of rebellious France.

A 20-year-old chef

According to the prosecution, this small group, founded in November 2016 and dismantled in October 2017, intended "to prepare combatants physically, psychologically and materially (...) in the perspective of an imminent racial war". With in motto, a claimed hatred. "Rebeux, blacks, scum, migrants, dealers, jihadists, you also dream of killing them all? We have made a wish JOIN US ”(sic), was it written on scanned leaflets found during the investigation.

All tried for "terrorist association", the six defendants, now aged 23 to 29, face up to ten years in prison.

Three others, minors at the time of the facts, will be tried in October by the children's court.

Their alleged leader, Logan Nisin, was 20 when he secretly founded the Organization of Social Armies (OAS), whose acronym deliberately recalls that of the Secret Army Organization, responsible for a bloody campaign against the independence of the Algeria in the 1960s.

Fan of Anders Breivik

Logan Nisin is then a coppersmith, lives in Vitrolles (Bouches-du-Rhône) with his mother and is already listed S for his membership in various ultra-right movements, including the Popular Movement for a New Dawn (MPNA) or the royalist organization French action. He was arrested in June 2017, the authorities worrying about his activity on Facebook where he leads a group of “supporters” of Anders Behring Breivik, neo-Nazi author of the killing which killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

During searches, investigators discovered documents revealing the existence of the OAS and several weapons.

“The goal is not to kill in order to kill, the concrete objective of the organization is to trigger a remigration based on terror.

Scare them so that as much as possible can go away peacefully and then the remaining 10% is good, it is acceptable ”, will justify the young man.

The OAS had statutes, an organization chart, operating manuals, planned to extort funds from companies to buy weapons ... "On paper, it was thought", recognizes Logan Nisin's lawyer, Me Eric Bourlion, but without being concrete, he says.

“We organize ourselves, we write, we draw… but we never act”.

Unpublished trial

Since 2017, six investigations linked to plans for ultra-right attacks, including the one on the OAS, have been opened by the anti-terrorism prosecution. This OAS case is the first to be judged. During this two-week trial, Jean-Luc Mélenchon will be heard. In custody, Logan Nisin had indicated that the group had considered attacking the leader of the rebels during the presidential election, before abandoning the idea. The discovery of the existence of the OAS and its projects constituted "a shift" in the political life of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, assured his lawyers, Mes Mathieu Davy and Jade Dousselin, specifying that their client would ask for a new times, to become a civil party.

During the investigation, Logan Nisin had also said to have "really" planned to attack Christophe Castaner and considered attacking a flea market, kebabs or the site of the great mosque of Vitrolles.

However, he also said he never had the means to achieve his ambitions.

He also explained that he had thought about it and judged that the risks of ending up in prison were too high.

After his remand in custody, Logan Nisin first incited his partners, not yet arrested, to destroy evidence and continue the activity of the OAS.

Four years later, his lawyer assures him: "he is impatiently waiting to be able to explain himself" at the bar, "he is someone who has changed".

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  • Christophe Castaner

  • Jean-Luc Mélenchon

  • Trial

  • Terrorism

  • Ultra right

  • Attack

  • Justice