Four neo-Nazi sympathizers have been placed in custody as part of an investigation into antisemitic and hateful leaflets distributed in recent months in many regions of France, including Normandy, announced Thursday, September 14, the Rouen prosecutor’s office.
Three of them “appear sufficiently involved” and should be referred Friday morning, said the prosecutor of the Republic of Rouen, Frédéric Teillet, in a statement.
In May 2023, the Rouen prosecutor’s office had been “seized of various facts of distribution of antisemitic and hateful leaflets, either by sending by email, in particular to elected officials, or by distributing such leaflets in the mailboxes of individuals,” recalls Frédéric Teillet. “Given the content of these leaflets” racist, struck with swastikas and extolling the alleged superiority of the “white man“, and the large number of e-mailings, the national prosecutor’s office for the fight against online hate had taken up this aspect of the investigation.
The investigations concerning the distribution of paper leaflets, led by the Rouen prosecutor’s office, have identified “two alleged perpetrators of a distribution of leaflets in La Neuville-Chant d’Oisel” (Seine-Maritime) last May and degradation by racist “tags” in the same commune between 5 and 7 August.
However, one of these two suspects, who reside in the Rouen region, recently went to the Pau region. “After a new distribution of similar leaflets near the memorial of the internment camp of Gurs (Pyrénées-Atlantiques)“, which houses more than a thousand Jewish graves, investigators proceeded Wednesday to arrests. Three other suspects, including two residents of the Pau region, were taken into custody, the prosecutor’s office said.
During the various searches carried out, were found leaflets identical to those whose distribution is the subject of the various procedures, stencils corresponding to the tagged inscriptions, an armband and a Nazi flag, as well as some weapons of categories C and D, “details the prosecutor of Rouen.
The hearings confirmed the detainees’ sympathy with far-right and neo-Nazi ideology and their familiarity with the organization “participatory democracy“,” the statement said. These leaflets distributed in several French regions (Brittany, Jura, around Dijon, etc.) refer to the website “DemPart” (for “Participatory Democracy“), which the justice had asked to block at the end of 2018 following multiple convictions on negationist, racist, homophobic and antisemitic remarks. The site is still visible in France because it is hosted in the United States.
