Following the arrest of ten far-right militants in France earlier this week, new information has been released about the extremists including a claim that one member of the group had lost a daughter in the 2015 Bataclan terror attack.
Earlier this week police across France raided and arrested ten far-right extremists believed to have been targetting radical Islamic imams, radicalised former prisoners, and even women wearing Islamic veils for attacks.
Since the arrests, several claims have been made about the group, known as Action des Forces Opérationnelles (AFO), including several of the names of members including leader Guy S., a 65-year-old former police officer, and two other men named Dominique C., who is said to have lost his daughter in the Bataclan massacre, and Marie-Dominique R., Sud Ouest reports.
On a website associated with the AFO, the group denied any involvement of plotting attacks saying: “Everything is false in these accusations against our comrades. Our movement does not advocate violent attacks or provocations under any circumstances, which are counterproductive.”
The AFO is described as an “operational structure” of the organisation Réveil Patriote, or Patriotic Revival, and claims that neighbourhoods across France have been largely taken over by “supporters of the Islamist system who want to impose shariah”.
“We prepare ourselves, we do survivalism, we train in the law. But we have never spoken of violence in the current situation, that of a relative peace, where we must not do stupid acts or provocations towards the opposite camp,” the group has said.
According to the French domestic intelligence agency, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), the group had in their possession homemade hand grenades and other explosive materials.
The arrests come after heightened levels of violence and violent plots from both the extreme right and the extreme left across Europe. The far-left extremist Antifa movement, in particular, has grown more and more radical since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.
Along with members of the movement calling for armed conflict with the French state, others in Germany have released a terror handbook ahead of the populist Alternative for Germany conference this weekend. The “riot tourist” manual encourages attacks on the conference, how to avoid police, and links to a booklet called “Prisma” which details how to make remote-detonated bombs.
Earlier this year in March, a German Antifa member was caught with a mobile bomb factory.