Arrested in 2017, Islamic radical convert Alain Feuillerat is set to be tried in a French court for preparing a terrorist attack on an airbase in Évreux.
Feuillerat, a former soldier in the French army, was arrested in May 2017 in the proximity of the airbase while wearing a uniform emblazoned with the Islamic State flag and near several weapons, including a pump-action shotgun, which he had abandoned nearby.
Investigators also discovered more Islamic State flags, a Quran, and a portable USB thumb drive detailing his declaration of allegiance to the terror group in his vehicle.
Feuillerat had also sent letters to French media before he attempted his attack — which only got as far as cutting the outer fence of the airbase — in which he claimed responsibly for the planned assault, France info reports.
“My name is Alain Feuillerat, Muslim soldier defending my homeland: the Islamic State. It is I who is prepared, with the help of Allah, to attack against the air military base (BA 105) of Évreux Fauville,” he wrote.
Currently seen as having an unstable mental disposition, Feuillerat had previously been a decorated soldier, deployed overseas to Lebanon and the Ivory Coast. But after the death of a comrade in 2011, he left the army, converted initially to Catholicism and then to Islam in 2013.
Following his conversion to Islam, many relatives, neighbours, and others had raised concerns over his proselytism and he eventually ended up on the French terror watchlist known as the S-File in 2014. If found guilty, he could face a prison sentence of up to ten years.
The process comes less than a year after another Islamic convert, 45-year-old Michael Harpon, stabbed several people to death, including police officers, at the police headquarters in Paris where he worked as an IT specialist.
A year earlier in London, another Islamic convert pleaded guilty to planning a massacre outside a Disney shop in London’s most famous shopping district.
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