The Paris Criminal Court on Friday January 28 sentenced Aurélien Chapeau to nine years in prison with a two-thirds security penalty. The 16thand The Chamber, which specializes in terrorism cases, found him guilty of “individual preparation for committing an act of terrorism”. Joseph B., a retiree accused in the same case of selling unauthorized weapons to Mr. Hat but cleared of any qualification as a terrorist, was sentenced to twenty months in prison, fifteen of which were suspended, which covers his pre-trial detention. He missed the trial on medical grounds while Aurélien Chapeau appeared in custody. Mr Chapeau’s conviction, 38, will be accompanied by a five-year social court follow-up with a treatment order.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for Aurélien Chapeau, the second far-right activist to be tried in France for “terrorist sole proprietorships”. The first, Guillaume Malaval, arrested in June 2017, was sentenced to seven years in prison in December 2019, more for his bombing plots than for his stated intention to kill Emmanuel Macron. It had attracted little attention at the time.also read Article reserved for our subscribers At the trial of Aurélien Chapeau, radical far-right activist, denial and self-pity
For Aurélien Chapeau it is something else. Far-right mass killings against minorities, Jews, Muslims or others, have multiplied: a synagogue in Pittsburgh (11 dead) in 2018; 2019 two mosques in Christchurch (51 dead), an Islamic center in Oslo (1 injured), a supermarket frequented by Latinos in El Paso (23 dead), a synagogue and a Turkish restaurant in Halle (1 dead); 2020 two shisha bars in Hanau (9 dead). The far right has become the number one terrorist threat in the United States. It is in full swing in France, compounded by the rise of violent conspiracies linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. About ten investigations were opened by the National Counter-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) and 53 people were charged, ie “15% of the charges [pour terrorisme] », the prosecutor said on Friday at the beginning of his indictment.
Suffice it to say that the trial of Mr Chapeau, a Limogesian by birth and ex-military, was therefore followed with some interest. After the fall 2021 trial of the small organization of social armies (OAS) for “terrorist association of criminals” whose leader Logan Nisin was sentenced to nine years in prison with no security penalty, here is the moment around a “lone wolf” to judge, a French-style profile of a potential mass murderer. That’s what the defendant’s defense feared, a trial, for example, and for edification, a trial to set a range of sentences.
