Four far-right suspects accused of planning attacks on mosques and Jewish targets went on trial on Monday in Paris, with a judge surprising the court by ordering the hearings be made public, AFP reported. One of the accused was a teenager when police arrested the suspects in 2018 and 2019, making a closed-door trial for all four men likely under French law. However, presiding judge Christophe Petiteau said tthat given the seriousness of the allegations, "the court considers it important to lift the restricted publicity". France has uncovered several violent plots by far-right extremists in recent years, including one in 2018 suspected of preparing an attempt on President Emmanuel Macron's life. Prosecutors say the four men, now aged between 22 and 28, joined a private internet chat group called "Operation WaffenKraft", where talks "very quickly turned to the preparation of terrorist projects". The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Nazi's elite SS corps, which was founded by Adolf Hitler. The chat group discussed targets, including mosques as well as the headquarters of the Jewish council (CRIF) and the office of the anti-Jewish discrimination league (LICRA), according to AFP . The group's alleged leader, Alexandre Gilet, at the time a volunteer deputy police officer in the southeastern department of Isere. Gilet was arrested after police learned he had ordered equipment that could be used for making explosives. One of the suspects later said of Gilet, "I think he wanted to do something worse than the Bataclan," a reference to the November 2015 jihadist attacks in Paris , claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS), in which 130 people were killed, dozens of them at the Bataclan concert venue. The discovery of training videos and photos led police to four other people taking part in a target practice in a remote forest in July 2018. France has been on high alert in the wake of the terrorist attacks in recent years. Even before the November 2015 attacks, the violence began with the January 2015 attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris. Related articles: Iran summons European envoys over UN nuclear meeting France, Germany, Italy, and UK back Arab Gaza plan France backs Arab plan for Gaza but demands Hamas' exclusion Legal battle over deceased Jewish author In October of 2020, a man stabbed three people to death at the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice. He was later handed terror murder charges . The same month, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by a Chechen man in a suburb of Paris after showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class on freedom of speech.
