A French black supremacist accidentally caused an explosion in an apartment and injured himself while handling chemicals, allegedly to make explosives.
A fire broke out at a residence in the commune of Saint-Leu-la-Forêt on Wednesday shortly after 8 am, reportedly caused when the suspect mishandled chemicals.
As a result of the blast, the suspect’s hands were seriously injured, and a woman who was in the apartment at the time was also wounded, Le Point reports.
Local police say that the man in the case is well-known to them and to intelligence services. An official told the magazine: “He’s a black supremacist, he doesn’t hide it.” Intelligence services labelled him a “black nationalist, who defends an ideology of the superiority of blacks over whites”.
The suspect is believed to have been attempting to make one or more explosive devices with the chemicals that caused the explosion. The building housing the apartment was initially evacuated, but other residents were soon let back into their homes.
The episode comes just months after police in Paris raided the headquarters of the far-left Antifa extremist group and also found bomb-making materials. Police found dozens of Molotov cocktails and said that the building had been used to manufacture explosive devices.
Far-left extremism and woke ideologies have become more popular in France in recent years, with the country seeing its own Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests last year following the death of American George Floyd.
The French rallies, however, were motivated by the death of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died while in police custody in 2016. Authorities say Traoré had died due to heart failure, but others, including his family, blamed police brutality for his death.
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