Between jihadism and neo-Nazism, the trial of three young people suspected of radical projects

Europe 1 with AFP 10:37 a.m., February 20, 2024

One dreamed of leaving for Syria, the other glorified Nazism, and both spoke online with a gun-obsessed woman who wanted to blow up a church. The three have been appearing since Tuesday before the Paris children's court for separate plans for violent actions between jihadism and neo-Nazism. The three young people, coming from Hérault, Paris or Haut-Rhin, were 16-17 years old at the time of the events, and were arrested during 2021.

A teenager with a morbid fascination with violence

At the heart of this atypical trio, a young girl with multiple nicknames and a morbid fascination with violence, a lonely CAP student who has been out of school since she was 16. Coming from a family of five children who live in precarious conditions, she remains isolated in her room, discussing the manufacture of TATP explosives or videos of executions with followers of Islamist ideology or ultra-right supremacists. .

Investigators will find his blackened notebooks and the mention of “places of hatred”, including an oriental restaurant, a Jewish cultural center, a Protestant church. “There is more hatred than anything else in me, and I don’t know what to do with my life,” the woman who says she has a “passion” for firearms will tell investigators.

A teenager tried for wanting to join a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda

In police custody, she admits to having "thought a little" about targeting a church in Béziers, and also to having subscribed to the encrypted Telegram channel 19HH administered by a certain "Abdellatif924", who spoke to her about marriage and a departure for Afghanistan, the Maldives or Turkey.

Behind this nickname, a scholarship student who was then enrolled in a preparatory class in a prestigious high school in the capital and was aiming for HEC for a while before preferring hijra ("departure") to a land of Islam and videos on the Koran. The teenager, converted around the age of 14, is being tried for having considered plans to leave for the Iraqi-Syrian zone to join terrorist organizations, Omar Diaby's group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in particular, as well as for the dissemination of jihadist propaganda.

A second teenage fan of MMA and Hitler

The third, an MMA and Adolphe Hitler fan, described as provocative by those close to him, is appearing for participation in violent action plans, in particular by searching for weapons and physical training. He signed under the pseudonym @Poutine4555, and demonstrated to "his internet friends" his adherence to the theory of the great replacement and his fascination with several perpetrators of mass killings, including Dylan Klebold, one of the two attackers who killed 13 people at Columbine High School (United States) in 1999.

He mentioned in an encrypted message the plan for an attack on his school which he was considering with another young man, who had just reached the age of majority. The latter will be tried in March before the criminal court, just like the young woman tried this week before the children's court and who will appear a second time for facts that occurred after she reached the age of majority. The trial in children's court, behind closed doors, is scheduled until Friday.