Ultrad right: the founder of the OAS small group sentenced to 9 years in prison

Europe 1 with AFP 4:16 p.m., October 12, 2021

The Paris court on Tuesday sentenced Logan Nisin, the young founder of the ultra-right group OAS, to nine years of imprisonment with continued detention, during the first trial for ultra-right terrorism tried in France since 2017. The court has also found guilty of "terrorist criminal association" five other defendants, aged 23 to 33, pronouncing in particular an eight-year prison sentence with a committal warrant for Thomas Annequin, number 2 of the small group Organization of Social Armies. The prosecution had requested ten years' imprisonment against Logan Nisin.

"Far from a fantasized political project", the "new OAS" was conceived by "copying the structure of the Secret Army Organization of 1961", a politico-military group responsible for a bloody repression in the 1960s against the independence of Algeria, estimated the president of the chamber by reading his judgment. 

"Imminence of the passage to the act"

In this file, "everything attests to the imminence of the passage to the act", "the OAS was created as a defense army ready if necessary to destabilize the institutions", "to fracture the social body", a continued the magistrate, recalling his "calls for rebellion", his "incitement to kill" or his corporate racketeering projects to finance weapons. Throughout the two weeks of the trial, the members of the group assured that they would never have taken action, by returning the responsibility to its founder Logan Nisin. 

"Their personal responsibility cannot be diluted in a disembodied global strategy: they all, and collectively, embodied the OAS", ruled the court, recognizing them all guilty.

The decision of the Paris Criminal Court was eagerly awaited: the OAS case is the first to be tried out of the seven investigations opened by the anti-terrorism prosecution since 2017 concerning plans for ultra-right attacks.

Terrorism compared to Islamist terrorism

In her indictment, the prosecutor urged the court to measure the "significant scope" of her judgment, which she wanted exemplary to counter the "exceptional rise in power of the threat brought by the ultra-right movement". Since 2017, 48 people have been indicted by the anti-terrorism prosecution in plans for attacks attributed to the ultra-right. Terrorism that the prosecutor compared to Islamist terrorism, describing "two sides of the same fanatic coin". 

Me Gabriel Dumenil, who defends Romain Pugin sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison, described a "severe judgment".

"The legal qualification, in particular of terrorism, does not appear at all so clear. It is about a judgment which was delivered to mark a jurisprudential position as regards future trials", he estimated. from AFP.

The condemned and the prosecution have ten days to appeal.