They wanted to poison halal products, murdering imams, exploding a mosque: sixteen militants of ultra -right in court

They are called Guy, Philippe, Bernard or Marie-Véronique. They are former police, soldiers, teachers or craftsmen. They present themselves as simple patriots “concerned with the future of France”. In reality, they formed an underground armed group, the action of the operational forces (AFO), whose trial opens this Tuesday in Paris. Their objective: targeting Muslims, sowing fear and hitting hard.

Between 2017 and 2018, these sixteen ultra -right activists planned several terrorist attacks, according to the investigation: poisoning halal food in supermarkets with cyanide, killing up to 200 imams deemed “radicalized”, exploding the door of a mosque in Clichy, or shooting Muslim figures from a distance. They had weapons, action plans, a structured organization. And, in the shadows, an ideological discourse nourished by identity obsession, hatred of Islam and civil war fantasies.

These projects have not come out of nowhere. They germinated in a climate where some no longer hesitate to designate Muslims as an existential threat. And they were carried by apparently “integrated” people – proof that radicalization is not the prerogative of a single fringe of society.

The most freezing? These acts, however planned, were correctionalized. No assize court, no crime, but crimes. “Because the projects were not fully finalized,” said the national anti -terrorist prosecution. A decision which questions, at a time when we readily evoke Islamist terrorism but when one still struggles to name the one who comes from the extreme right.

Faced with these facts, political silence is deafening. If a Muslim group had dreamed of poisoning kosher rays or killing 200 priests, emotion would have been national. There, the watchword is prudence, almost discomfort. As if the violent ultra -right was not really scary, or not to the right people.