The two protagonists of the “AZF group” tried by the Paris criminal court for having threatened, 20 years ago, to detonate explosive devices on railway tracks in exchange for a large ransom, were sentenced Friday to prison terms. .
They will be able to serve their sentence at home using an electronic bracelet, the court said.
The 14th chamber of the criminal court followed to the letter the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested “firmness” against the two defendants, Michel D. and Perrine R., a former business manager retired from 76 years old and one of his former employees, now a house painter, aged 61.
Michel D. was sentenced to 5 years in prison including one year suspended and his accomplice to 3 years in prison including two years suspended.
While ruling in favor of a prison sentence against her, the court recognized that Perrine R.'s discernment had been impaired at the time of the events and acquitted her of the charges against her concerning the manufacture of explosives.
Neither of the two defendants has a criminal record.
“It’s a miracle in her situation,” remarked Perrine R.’s lawyer, Me Jean-François Morant, describing his client’s “battered life.”
Born to an unknown father, having suffered a miserable childhood in homes, often toxic relationships, countless addictions including to ether, Perrine R. has never sought to minimize her role.
She assured the court that she had acted “in full conscience” and out of conviction for “a humanist project”.
At the trial, Michel D., “a Tournesol professor” according to his lawyer Lucile Collot, repeated that he was counting on the ransom to begin manufacturing a “water engine”.
The two former members of the “AZF group” will also have to jointly pay 5.8 million euros to the SNCF for damages claimed by the company for the material damage suffered and a symbolic euro each for the damage. moral.
Their lawyers indicated that they would appeal concerning the civil interests requested by the SNCF.
“My Big Wolf” and “Suzy”
The affair broke out at the end of 2003 when an unknown group called "AZF" - named after the factory whose explosion caused the death of 31 people in Toulouse in 2001 - claimed to have buried "a series of bombs" under the railway ballast and promised to blow them up in the absence of payment by the State of a ransom of 4 to 8 million euros.
The threats were taken very seriously at the Élysée and the Ministry of the Interior, who had received between December 2003 and March 2004 nine letters signed “AZF”, an organization presenting itself as a “pressure group of a terrorist nature secretly created within a secular brotherhood with ethical and political specificity.”
To communicate with the police, the group used sentimental classified ads in the newspaper Libération.
He chose “Mon Gros Loup” as his pseudonym while the police nicknamed him “Suzy”.
On the group's instructions, on February 21, 2004, the authorities found a first bomb - "sophisticated" and in working order - on the Paris-Toulouse line, near Folles (Haute-Vienne).
A second bomb was discovered accidentally by an SNCF agent on March 24, 2004 in Aube on the Paris-Troyes-Basel route.
The next day, “AZF” announced by letter to the authorities the suspension of its action.
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The investigation to identify who was hiding behind the “AZF group” remained at a standstill until September 2017 when Perrine R.'s ex-companion denounced the two protagonists to the gendarmerie.
Arrested in June 2018, Michel D. and Perrine R. immediately admitted the facts.
During the trial, Michel D. insisted that the two bombs placed on the tracks were not intended to explode.
But “no one can seriously assert that there was no risk,” the prosecutor replied.