An ultra-right supporter, who had called for racist murder on the internet, was sentenced on Thursday 9 November to six years in prison by the Paris Court of Appeal, for acts of apology for terrorism and online incitement to violent actions, dating back to 2020-2021.
This sentence is much heavier than the one imposed in the first instance on Dominique D., a former municipal gardener in Montauban, who advocated on Telegram guerrilla warfare and the elimination of "negroes", communists and Jews. In February, the Paris Criminal Court's terrorism chamber sentenced him to five years in prison, two of which were suspended. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office appealed.
The fact that the Court of Appeal did not suspend the sentence this time is "a real disappointment," the 48-year-old's lawyer, Séverine Lheureux, told AFP. "Obviously, this is due to the current political climate and the resurgence of xenophobic and anti-Semitic acts that are clearly in line with my client's publications," she said.
A second defendant, Didier B., 62 years old, prosecuted for having illegally acquired and possessed weapons, as well as for having sold them to Dominique D., also had his sentence increased: this former truck driver, living in Gironde, was sentenced to three years in prison, compared to one year in first instance.
Hall of Fame of Portraits of Far-Right Killers
Monitored by the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI) for his exchanges on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, Dominique D. was arrested in November 2021 and placed in pre-trial detention. Investigators found 48 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition at his home.
However, the investigation, which was opened for "terrorist criminal association", did not establish that he was plotting a violent act. In addition to video montages of executions, Dominique D. shared on his Telegram channels a kind of pantheon of portraits of far-right killers, including the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik. According to the prosecution, the former gardener adhered to a "polymorphous" ultra-right ideology - bringing together neo-Nazi theses, white supremacism, survivalism and accelerationism - and went "further than the apology of terrorism" since he produced and distributed a 19-page "practical guide" "for those who adhere to the ideology of the ultra-right and want to take action".
For his lawyer, however, "the expert psychologist said that it was probably not necessary to take the publications and the violence displayed at face value, but on the contrary to see it as the expression of an inner suffering, of an outlet that was necessary for him, even if it was very regrettable."