On the evening of November 11, dozens of people dressed in black, their faces partly masked, attempted to break down the door of a premises in Old Lyon using fireworks and iron bars, according to several witnesses.
Inside, around a hundred people were following a conference by a doctor who had worked in Gaza, organized by the Palestine 69 Collective. The attack left seven injured, three of whom were transferred to hospital.
The same evening, a man close to “the ultra-right movement” was arrested near the scene, in possession of a baseball bat, brass knuckles and a mouthguard, according to the Prosecutor's Office. .
He was indicted as part of an open judicial investigation, notably for aggravated violence and damage during a meeting.
In addition, this attack was claimed on a Telegram loop of ultra-right identity and neo-Nazi groups by the “Guignol Squad”, an informal group customary for violent actions in Lyon.
VIDEO.
Mortars, wounded… A conference on Palestine targeted by the ultra-right in Lyon
As part of this investigation, eight suspects were arrested on Tuesday morning at the request of an investigating judge by judicial police and anti-terrorism agents, according to one of the sources.
They were placed in custody in Lyon.
This attack had relaunched calls to dissolve the small ultra-right groups active in Lyon, including Les Remparts, built on the ashes of Génération Identitaire, a collective dissolved in 2021. The Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin assured at the time that “significant resources were mobilized to challenge the perpetrators” of this coup.
“We will draw the consequences for the incriminated structures,” he wrote on X.
Éric Carpano, the president of Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, reported in a press release the “wave of arrests that occurred yesterday among identity movements” by demanding “the dissolution of all ultra-right groups that threaten seriously harms republican order and public safety in universities.”
Since 2021, the university “has on multiple occasions initiated disciplinary proceedings against students from these movements, sometimes accompanied by orders prohibiting access to the premises, with several reports to the public prosecutor and alerts to the police for acts of trespass, or accusations of intimidation and threats of violence,” adds its press release.