Tried in Paris, the former municipal employee of Montauban was found guilty of apology for terrorism and online incitement to violent actions. He was sentenced, on February 17, 2023, to 5 years in prison, 2 of which were suspended on probation.
The Paris Criminal Court delivered its judgment in the evening, this Friday, February 17, 2023, in Paris. Dominique D., municipal gardener in Montauban in the Tarn-et-Garonne and follower of the ultra-right ideology, was found guilty of apology for terrorism and online incitement to violent actions. He was also found guilty of illegal possession of weapons. He receives three years in prison.
The trial lasted two days from February 16 to 17, 2023. Dominique D. had been in detention at the prison de la Santé in Paris for 15 months, and he faced seven years’ imprisonment. After four hours of deliberation, the Chamber specializing in terrorism cases imposed on the Montauban gardener, five years in prison, two of which are suspended probation including an obligation of care.
Dominique D. was also sentenced for illegal acquisition and possession of weapons and explosives. Unrelated, however, to a terrorist enterprise, hence his trial before the Paris Criminal Court and not the Assizes. Penalty pronounced: a ban on possession of a weapon for 15 years and a permanent ban on exercising any public function.
I deeply regret my actions which could push people to commit the irreparable.
Dominique D. at the hearing
Six years of imprisonment had been required against Dominique D. According to the prosecutor, this ultra-right supporter had gone “further than the apology of terrorism” by producing and distributing a 19-page manual: a “practical guide for those who adhere to the ideology of the ultra-right and want to take action“.
Impossible, moreover, according to her, not to recognize the defendant’s adherence to the ideology “polymorph” ultra-right, bringing together neo-Nazi theses, white supremacism, accelerationism and survivalism.
At 47, Dominique D. apparently leads a quiet life. He is a municipal employee in charge of green spaces with the city of Montauban. And at the same time, he publishes between 2019 and 2021 calls for targeted assassinations, Nazi propaganda and videos of executions on a Telegram messaging channel, called “To hell”.
During the hearing at the Paris Criminal Court, Dominique D. admitted having been the administrator of public Telegram channels on which he broadcast Nazi, anti-Semitic and racist propaganda calling for targeted assassinations. In addition to video montages of executions, he shared portraits of far-right killers, including the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik.
The viewing of ultra violence had become, for him, a drug (…) and he locked himself in there.
Me Séverine Lheureux, lawyer for Dominique D.
Arrested in November 2021 and remanded in custody, themunicipal agent was in the sights of the General Directorate of Homeland Security for his publications which led to him being prosecuted for “direct provocation by an online means of communication to an act of terrorism and public condoning of an act of terrorism“, recalled the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office in Paris before the opening of this trial.
Many weapons and ammunition had been seized from his home during the searches: “there were in particular rifles, carbines, pistols, a revolver, shooting glasses, cartridges… Black powder, firework wicks, igniters were also found“, specified the parquet floor.
But, the investigation opened in particular for “terrorist conspiracy“, ultimately did not establish a passage to the violent act.
What in his life could have made him “twist”? The death of his father when he was nine? The death of his nephew in 2014? A somewhat passive life where he will end up contracting a sham marriage with the daughter-in-law of his Cameroonian partner? Faced with the judges, Dominique D. does not know what to say. He mumbles: “it’s true that I was 300 meters away when the attack on Mohamed took place Red”, et “I have a little resentment towards Islam”.
In 2020, he became addicted to videos relayed by identity groups. “It’s more the stress-relieving, subversive side that I liked. It was so extreme and over the top it was laughablehe said in front of the court, with a clumsy air. I am neither anti-semitic nor racist“, he tries to defend himself.
It was the pleasure of shocking, of feeling myself exist. I was in a bubble, it was dematerialized, I relayed very filthy stuff that I don’t believe.
He claims to have only read the relayed texts diagonally, that he only copied and pasted in montages, not without recalling those of jihadists who are, according to him, a form “love of graphics“.
“Publications are indisputable“, recognized Me Séverine Lheureux on the eve of this trial. But Dominique D.’s lawyer maintained that her client had no intention “to implement what these publications advocated.”
In November 2021, a second man was arrested in the wake of the Montauban gardener. This is Didier B., 61, living in Gironde. The two men met via social networks, and exchanged numerous times by messages on the sale of weapons.
A former truck driver, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, two of which were suspended on probation, for illegally acquiring and possessing weapons, as well as for selling them to Dominique D.
With AFP.
