Frenchman alleged to be a neo-Nazi sympathizer was sentenced to two years in prison after making threats online and was suspected of wanting to target the Olympic torch relay, authorities said Saturday.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the 19-year-old man was convicted after a swift trial overnight Friday.
Chages included related to sharing bomb-making instructions on social media and publishing posts inciting hate and death threats as well as posts with personal information that put people at risk.
The man — detained on Wednesday at his home in the Alsace region of eastern France — ran a group called “French Aryan division” on the social media channel Telegram, the statement said.
A French alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer was sentenced to two years in prison after making threats online and was suspected of wanting to target the Olympic torch relay. https://t.co/mCsQGpgIOG
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The prosecutor’s office said the man’s alleged comments that triggered the probe didn’t specifically target the Paris Olympics, which kick off with a high-security opening ceremony on Friday.
They were investigated by a unit dedicated to monitoring only hate.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Wednesday that anti-terror police detained the man and that he was an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer suspected of “a willingness to intervene during a stage, evidently, of the torch relay.”
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The relay is nearing the end of its months-long trip around France and overseas French territories before the Games’ opening.
France has been rocked in the past month by snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron.
In balloting June 30, right-wing candidates of the National Rally appeared headed for power, as CNN reported.
A second round of elections July 7, however, favored leftist parties.
So, the left remains in control, but the politics remain tumultuous.
Darmanin, who is staying on in a caretaker role at the interior ministry until a new government is formed in the wake of the earlier this month, said the suspect has previously been flagged by police “for ultra-right ideas, which can be termed neo-Nazi.”
“We know that he had, a priori, a desire to hit political targets or people with immigrant backgrounds,” he said.
The French capital’s security operation for its first Olympic Games in a century involves up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, plus a 10,000-strong military force that is patrolling streets and sites in the Paris region and carrying out other security missions.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
