December 8 Case: Anti-Terrorism Attacks Social Struggles

Detailed political analysis of the case file.

Soulèvements de la Terre activists detained by the Sub-Directorate for Anti-Terrorism (SDAT), anti-terrorist units mobilized against anti-nuclear activists, CGT trade unionists arrested by the DGSI (The General Directorate for Internal Security, NdT), RAID units (elite tactical unit of the french national police, NdT) deployed during urban uprisings… The recurrent mobilization of anti-terrorist investigative resources to repress social movements, combined with the dissemination of unequivocal language – “ecoterrorism”, “intellectual terrorism” – leave no room for doubt.

The aim is to confuse terrorism with social struggles, so as to prepare public opinion for the fact that the perpetrators of political illegalism will soon be charged with terrorism. And to give free rein to political repression, by giving it the benefit of the most complete repressive arsenal the law offers today: anti-terrorist legislation.

It is against this backdrop that the first trial of leftist activists for “terrorism” since the Tarnac affair [1] will take place in October. The stakes are high. A sentence would legitimize the government’s repressive shift. It is the symbolic dividing line between what can and cannot be qualified as terrorism that the government is seeking to shift in this trial.

Because, as far as the law is concerned, there is nothing to protect social struggles from anti-terrorism. As Olivier Cahn reminds us [2], “the vagueness of the notion of terrorist” – combined with the preventive nature of anti-terrorist justice – leads to a situation where “the law has been put in a position to allow an authoritarian regime to get rid of its opponents without having to change the law”.

This warning is illustrated in a caricatural way by the December 8 case, in which seven people, selected on the basis of their political opinions, have to defend themselves against having taken part in an… unknown project. Faced with this Kafkaesque situation, the aim is to take a look at how an anti-terrorist case is put together. It is about showing the extent to which the place given to the police narrative complicates any defense and opens the way to unbridled political repression. Finally, it is a reminder of why anti-terrorist justice is a legal monster that must be fought in its own right.

Terrorists…. without any terrorist plan

In this case, the charge of “association de malfaiteurs terroristes” (terrorist criminal association) has been upheld, even though the prosecution admits… that the accused had no “plans for violent action”. At the end of the two-year investigation, the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office admitted that the investigation had not “brought to light a finalized plan for violent action”. An admission shared by the investigating judge, who wrote that “no imminent act of violence seems to have been envisaged”.

And yet, the DGSI had not skimped on the means of surveillance. In addition to the use of audio-surveillance in living places, there were thousands of hours of phone surveillance, real-time geolocation, dozens of IMSI catching operations, hundreds of skiptrace operations and, of course, the analysis of dozens of digital media seized during arrests and associated accounts (e-mails, social networks…). In other words, seven intimacies violated to satisfy the unhealthy curiosity of the 106 or so intelligence officers who worked on this case.

Thousands of hours of audio-surveillance will then be mobilized to identify political statements and thus establish “profiles” of individuals “driven by the same ideology”. Paradoxically, the most intrusive means of surveillance are used to highlight… what none of the accused are really hiding.

The prosecutor and examining magistrate note that one defendant calls the police an “armed fascist militia”, while another refers to the police and military as “watchdogs”. In a private conversation, they note that one defendant pours out “his hatred of the police”, going so far as to denounce their “supposedly endemic racism”. Elsewhere, they point to a “violent diatribe against France, the French Revolution and all its republican and democratic values”, “remarks stigmatizing state violence” and an accused’s tendency to display “virulence in systematically challenging laws and institutions”.

All for nothing… No target, no date, no place. Not even a single discussion suggesting the preparation of any violent action. In other words: the investigation file is empty.

A void which has not, however, prevented this “justice of exception” from using all the violence the law allows [3]. More than three years of pre-trial detention accumulated, the use of white torture via solitary confinement, systematic strip-searches, friendships destroyed by communication bans and travel restrictions. Unusually, sexist remarks by the examining magistrate were also reported during the interrogations themselves [4]. As for surveillance, it has never stopped, and the accused must prepare their defense under the inquisitive eye of their accusers.

A story for each accusation (in collaboration with Mediapart)

In the absence of a terrorist project, the entire prosecution rests on a narrative constructed by the DGSI surrounding the “returnees from Rojava” where LibreFlot, the main defendant, left to fight Daech for 10 months.

This story was circulated by Mediapart several months before the investigation began. In an article written by Mathieu Suc – whose bias was strongly criticized [5]-, he relayed the police discourse on the “threat” posed for “French institutions” and “law enforcement agencies” by these “ultra-left activists” “who have undergone military training” in Rojava. In particular, the DGSI was concerned that these “returnees”, “deploying solid clandestine techniques”, could, once back in France, use their “experience” in “violent actions by the revolutionary ultra-left” aimed at “attacking symbols of the state and its forces of order”.

The entire investigation file is literally built around this narrative. As for the “terrorist project” that the investigation was unable to uncover, this too will be borrowed from the article.

The prosecutor will argue that LibreFlot, now a “veteran of Rojava”, has been working since his return to France to “set up an armed group” whose aim would be to carry out “violent actions particularly against the forces of order and the military” in order to “destabilize republican institutions”.

Aware that this formulation is a little vague – even in anti-terrorism – he will lose himself in conjecture as he seeks to clarify it. Sometimes the project will be a “guerrilla war aimed primarily at police officers”, sometimes “violent operations targeting symbols of oppression or, to a lesser extent, capitalism”, or even… a “project of intimidation or terror aimed at oppression or capital”.

The examining magistrate summed it all up in a sentence whose grandiloquence barely masked its emptiness. LibreFlot and his “acolytes” were said to have the aim of “provoking a revolution, overthrowing the State and attacking the lives of its representatives”.

A grotesque staging…

Ten months of surveillance, despite the use of the most advanced technical resources, yielded just four “facts” from which the whole story was staged:

• Two airsoft games – paintball without paint, one of the most popular activities at bachelor parties – which became “para-military training”.
• A few rifles and shotguns – most of them legally owned – add to the image of an “armed group”.
• The use of encrypted messaging systems for the general public (Signal, WhatsApp) will be transformed into proof of the existence of a “clandestine tiny group” whose members are said to live “in a cult of secrecy”, as demonstrated by La Quadrature du Net in a detailed article.
• A fortuitous connection during a weekend between LibreFlot and a friend specializing in special effects at Dysneyland and a playful experiment in making firecrackers during lockdown – based on YouTube videos, as many teenagers do out of simple curiosity – will serve to anchor the story in the collective imagination of the bombings of the 1970s.

Those four elements will be carefully selected from all the information gathered during the surveillance, then decontextualized to give substance to the pre-written scenario. To achieve this, the prosecution – led by the examining magistrate – will adhere to a strict principle: all facts that could undermine the police story can be ignored.

And misleading

Starting with the fact that the investigation has shown that no group exists. The accused do not all know each other, and a fortiori have never met. The only thing they have in common is that, to varying degrees, they all know LibreFlot, and crossed paths with him at least once in 2020.

In reality, the accused seem more likely to have been selected after a casting operation to equip the so-called group “with the skills needed to carry out violent actions”, in the words of the DGSI. In other words: a Disneyland artifier with knowledge of pyrotechnics,, a friend with “solid” knowledge of “encrypted communications”, two “survivalists” with – legally – a few shotguns, and a childhood friend who seems to have been reserved the position of lieutenant, with LibreFlot promoted to the rank of “charismatic leader”.

The importance given to the two pillars of the prosecution’s case – the firecracker experiments and the airsoft games – is inversely proportional to their importance in the time of the investigation. Their place is conferred by a simple effect of repetition, resulting in a few hours of one-off activities filling hundreds and hundreds of pages of the investigation file.

The criminal scope of airsoft games – and the same applies to firecracker games – is also produced by a pure stylistic effect: the use of the lexical field of war. They become “tactical progressions”, training for “urban warfare” or “progression in a closed environment”. The reader ends up forgetting that the “weapons” referred to on every page are… only ballpoint pistols. Moreover, the fact that a game of airsoft – each game having involved different groups – still seems a rather light “para-military training” for those who want to “overthrow the state” – protected, for its part, by over 200,000 police officers with real weapons – isn’t even addressed [6]. In anti-terrorism, it’s the intention that counts.

As for the statements of the accused, no value is attached to them (unless they serve the police narrative). One example among many is the description of the firecracker experiments.The perfect concordance of the accused’ statements describing how they stopped at the first “bang” obtained, the range of which “surprised” and “frightened” them, will not sway the examining magistrate. A terrorist lies.

Finally, the criminalization of digital practices to characterize the “clandestinity” of the accused serves both to activate the imagination of the 80s and to excuse the lack of evidence gathered. In the words of La Quadrature du Net, they support the conspiracy narrative that “this evidence exists, but it can’t be cracked”.

Criticism of the state, evidence of an unknown project

This staging would be incomplete without an appropriate setting to anchor the story in the imaginary world in which all the actions of the accused are to be interpreted. In this case, it will be the “Years of Lead”. This backdrop will be built up over dozens of pages, detailing every violent action carried out in the 70s and 80s.

Historical continuity will be ensured by assimilating all the emblematic struggles of recent years – ZADs, collective defense, the dismantling of harmful infrastructures, the struggle against police violence and even help for migrants – to so many harbingers of a return to “ultra-left terrorism”, as Serge Quadrupanni has shown.

It is on the basis of this imaginary world that the political opinions of the accused will be criminalized and transformed into evidence of the existence of a terrorist project. It is this imagination that will enable the DGSI to write that, beyond the facts, what proves that a “violent act” is envisaged by the accused is that it is “in line with their ideology”.

What’s more, the examining magistrate noted that the comments made were “in line with several of the books seized”, testifying to “total adherence to the anarchist cause”. The prosecution cited texts by Auguste Blanqui, Kroptokin, Malatesta and Alfredo Bonanno, articles criticizing anti-terrorist justice and DNA profiling, as well as CNT and Fédération Anarchiste monthly magazines.

In his indictment, the prosecutor went so far as to transcribe the lyrics of “politically committed rap songs” – recorded from the audio-surveillance in living places – which he commented on at length, insisting that their “targets” were “representatives of the forces of law and order”. Finally, special attention is paid to the “anthology of songs belonging to the anarchist repertoire” found on the phone of one of the accused.

Surveillance and narrative construction

We can see how, far from contributing “to the ascertainment of the truth”, as the DGSI puts it on every request, surveillance is used in counter-terrorism as a tool for distorting reality.

It allows the prosecution to have access to a phenomenal quantity of information from which it can simply pick and choose the few elements which, once decontextualized, will serve to materialize the police fiction. The rest being carefully ignored, surveillance is in no way intended to reflect any reality, but to increase the probability of rendering a pre-established scenario plausible.

This “reductive process”, in the words of one accused before the examining magistrate, is used in particular to inscribe those under investigation in the roles assigned to them by the police narrative, generating a feeling of dispossession and denial of their experience, which he describes as follows: the “months of investigation […] clearly served only to paint a falsified portrait of my person, retaining only a tiny part of my words and activities, always decontextualized and intended solely to incriminate me, to the detriment of any other element characterizing me”.

The COVID to the rescue of a shaky narrative

About the arrests, they illustrate the arbitrariness of the concept of preventive justice. When arrests are made, there is no “imminent threat”, but rather an investigation that is stalled and an intelligence service that has to justify the human and technical resources mobilized. Antiterrorism is also a question of “profitability”.

In fact, almost all the “facts” of the case – airsoft and firecrackers – took place during the preliminary investigation (closed in April 2020 at the same time as the judicial enquiry was opened). As the months go by, none of this is repeated. Worse still, the “group” never met. As a result, there are fewer and fewer surveillance reports in the file.

The embarrassment is all the greater given that, at the close of the so-called preliminary investigation, the DGSI drew up a summary report in which it is written that “no plans for violent action seemed to have been defined”, going so far as to add that “the constitution of a group dedicated to setting up guerrilla actions was not apparent”.

Clearly, the investigating judge and the prosecutor prefer to act in bad faith. The examining magistrate will write that the “second national lockdown” “complicated the possibilities for the suspects […] to find each other”. The public prosecutor will explain that the projects were “hampered or complicated by the occurrence of the Covid-19 virus”.

The Covid saving France from dangerous terrorists, that was daring. All the more so as the arrests were made 3 weeks after the start of the second lockdown, and it was during the first that the DGSI was able to observe one of the airsoft games and the play around the firecrackers…

Putting anti-terrorism on trial… or giving up political freedoms

Make no mistake about it. The absurdity of an accusation without an object, and a fortiori without evidence, is the hallmark of anti-terrorism. Years of Islamophobic jurisprudence have transformed anti-terrorism into an ideal tool for political repression, while a succession of security laws has given intelligence agencies the surveillance powers they need to feed the accusatory narratives of their choice.

And today, anti-terrorism is seeking to extend its reach to social struggles. Last July, the director of the DGSI explained that, in a context of diminishing “Islamist threat”, his services were now focusing more on “extremes”. While the DGSI has doubled in size in ten years, it is now “looking for new outlets” in “ecology “* and “extreme violence”, as the SDAT recently explained to a defendant in the Lafarge case.

The multiplication of far-right terrorist trials should therefore not make us happy [7], but alarm us. It is merely the premise of what lies ahead us. To welcome the progressive extension of anti-terrorism in any direction is to dig the grave of our political freedoms.

On the left, the December 8 affair is the first test of a repressive movement whose violence promises to be terrible. At the Senate hearing following the Sainte-Soline crackdown, Darmanin had already brandished this case as an example of a “foiled attack” by the “ultra-left” to justify the violence unleashed on environmental activists [8]. If convicted, we can expect to see an increase in the number of left-wing activists charged with terrorism.

The trial will be held every afternoon from Tuesday to Friday from October 3 to 27 at the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance. Calls for mobilization have been launched for the opening and closing of the trial, but it is public, so anyone can attend as they wish. If it is to be the trial of anti-terrorism, it will also be a trying time for the seven accused : any help, support, smile or helping hand will be welcome.

Come one, come all!

 

Notes

[1] See the websites of the support committees here and here. See also this compilation of texts published in support of the accused here, the Radio Pikez program available here and this one from Radio Parleur, this article from Revue Z and this article from lundimatin.

[2] See the interview with Olivier Cahn here. See also the archive of the Tarnac support committee website here, an article published in 2008 here and this interview with Julien Coupat. See also the following texts on the “tow truck affair”, the first anti-terrorist case involving the “anarcho-autonomous movement”: Mauvaises Intentions 1, Mauvaises Intentions 2, Mauvaises Intentions 3, Analyse d’un dossier d’instruction antiterroriste and Face à l’outil antiterroriste, quelques éléments pratiques. To find out more about this case, other sources are available at the end of the article L’antiterrorisme contre les autonomes de Zones Subversives. For a more general discussion of the legal abuses of anti-terrorism, see the following texts: Pauline Le Monnier de Gouville, “De la répression à la prévention. Réflexion sur la politique criminelle antiterroriste”, Les cahiers de la Justice, 2017, available here; Laurence Buisson “Risques et périls de l’association de malfaiteurs terroriste”, 2017, Délibérée review and available here ; Julie Alix and Olivier Cahn, “Mutations de l’antiterrorisme et émergence d’un droit répressif de la sécurité nationale”, Revue de science criminelle et de droit pénal comparé, 2017, available here; François Sureau’s speech to the Constitutional Council on the offence of individual terrorist enterprise in 2017, available here; the International Federation of Human Rights’ report “La porte ouverte à l’arbitraire”, published in 1999; Human Rights Watch’s report “La justice court-circuitée. Les lois et procédure antiterroristes en France”, published in 2008 and available here.

[3] On the appeals lodged by Camille and LibreFlot, see the press release here. On the State’s condemnation of LibreFlot’s illegal solitary confinement, see the Reporterre article available here. On his living conditions in solitary confinement and his hunger strike, see in particular this compilation of LibreFlot’s writings and the testimony attached to the press release mentioned above. On the general conditions of the investigation, see this open letter to the investigating judge. On the denunciation of sexist treatment, see this feminist appeal. See also the testimony of an accused on the conditions of detention at l’envolée.

[4] One defendant denounced the investigating judge’s behavior as “degrading for all women”.

[5] For reactions to Mathieu Suc’s article, see Corinne Morel Darleux’s article, lundimatin’s article, André Hébert’s response and an Arrêts sur Images article. It’s interesting to note that one fact was not known at the time. In his article, Mathieu Suc mentions that “according to our [his] information” “ultra-left” militants had travelled to Colombia to meet with the ELN, a way of reinforcing the anxiety-inducing nature of his story. As it happens, this information was used against one of the accused in the December 8 affair. There is every reason to believe that one of those charged on December 8 was among those concerned by this “information”. Throughout the investigation – the information appeared in the note opening the preliminary inquiry – the DGSI used this argument to characterize the dangerousness of this individual, and to justify its demands for ever more intrusive means of surveillance. After two years of investigation, it turned out that this person had simply gone…. in holidays in Colombia. The examining magistrate timidly wrote that “there was therefore no evidence to support the initial information”. But the damage was done.

[6] The desire to criminalize these airsoft games is particularly ironic at a time when the government is multiplying measures such as “global security defense classes”, when the army organizes laser pistol shooting games for high-school students… See Politis article “Quand l’armée envahit l’école” available here.

[7] A caricatural example of this position by the “left” press is, here again, offered by Mathieu Suc. See in particular his coverage of the Barjols trial, and his uncritical presentation of the DGSI’s “cyber-infiltration” units here and here, which in passing relays the police discourse aimed at making “encrypted private messaging” the reason for the spread of far-right radicalism.

[8] His hearing is available here. See from 10:20:19 for reference to the December 8 affair. See also his intervention on BFM here, where he used the December 8 affair to denounce the “ultra-left threat”.