OAS trial: the founder of the ultra-right group sentenced to nine years in prison – archyde

The young founder of the extreme right-wing organization of the Social Armies (OAS, in tribute to his famous predecessor of the early 1960s), Logan Nisin, was sentenced, Tuesday, October 12, to nine years’ imprisonment with continued detention. detention, during the first trial for ultra-right terrorism tried in France since 2017.

The Paris court also found guilty of “terrorist criminal association” five other defendants, aged 23 to 33, pronouncing in particular an eight-year prison sentence with a committal warrant for Thomas Annequin, number 2 of the small group. ultra-right.

The defendants have been appearing before the Paris Criminal Court since September 21 for “Criminal terrorist association”. The group planned to attack mosques, kebabs, leftist bars and political figures in an attempt to trigger a “Remigration” immigrants. “Rebeus, blacks, drug dealers, migrants, scum, jihadists, if you too dream of killing them all, we made the wish, join us!” “, enjoined one of the recruitment leaflets of the new OAS.

The prosecution had requested ten years’ imprisonment, the maximum penalty, against Logan Nisin, 25, the founder of the group, his brain and his engine.

“Far from a fantasized political project”, the “New OAS” was designed in “Tracing the structure of the Secret Army Organization of 1961”, a politico-military group responsible for a bloody repression in the 1960s against the independence of Algeria, estimated the president of the chamber when reading his judgment. In this file, “Everything attests to the imminence of the passage to the act”, “The OAS was created as a defense army ready, if necessary, to destabilize the institutions”, “To fracture the social body”, continued the magistrate, recalling his “Calls to rebellion”, his “Incitement to kill” or his corporate racketeering projects to finance weapons.

“Rise in power of the threat carried by the ultra-right”

Throughout the two weeks of the trial, the members of the group assured that they would never have taken action, by returning the responsibility to its founder, Logan Nisin. “Their personal responsibility cannot be diluted in a disembodied global strategy: they have all, and collectively, embodied the OAS”, ruled the court, finding them all guilty.

The decision of the Paris Criminal Court was eagerly awaited: the OAS case is the first to be tried out of the seven investigations opened by the anti-terrorism prosecution since 2017 concerning plans for ultra-right attacks. In her indictment, the prosecutor urged the court to measure the “Significant scope” of her judgment, which she wanted to be exemplary, to counter the “Exceptional rise in power of the threat brought by the ultra-right movement”.

Since 2017, 48 people have been indicted by the anti-terrorism prosecution in plans for attacks attributed to the ultra-right. Terrorism the prosecutor compared to Islamist terrorism, describing “Two sides of the same fanatic coin”.

M^e Gabriel Dumenil, who defends Romain Pugin, sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison, described a “Severe judgment”. “The legal qualification, in particular terrorism, does not appear at all so clear. It is about a judgment which was delivered to mark a jurisprudential position regarding future trials ”, he estimated. The condemned and the prosecution have ten days to appeal.