It is a small ultra-right group, a police term used to designate the violent extreme right. Division Martel was dissolved this Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, announced the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on his X account (formerly Twitter).
This small group had notably planned to attack North African supporters on the sidelines of the 2022 World Cup. According to the dissolution decree, the Martel Division, which was formed during the second half of 2022 to have around thirty members, advocates a fight through violence “against antifas and people of immigration or presumed Muslims” to “promote the advent of nationalist and xenophobic supremacy”.
A group that “has no place in our Republic”
“This small group incites violence and racial hatred. It has no place in our Republic,” the Minister of the Interior underlined on Wednesday on his account ultra-right whose names have not been communicated and whose procedure is ongoing, specified the Ministry of the Interior.
Gérald Darmanin had stressed to AFP, at the time of his announcement, that “the services had been working for several months” on the Martel Division, of which a person “is suspected of having contributed to the on-site coordination” of the violent demonstration from Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme).
Former members of Zouaves Paris
On the night of November 25 to 26, ultra-right activists went to the Monnaie district in Romans-sur-Isère, with the aim of “fighting it out”, according to the authorities, with the young people of this district where several of those implicated in the death of Thomas, 16, stabbed on the sidelines of a ball in the village of Crépol come from.
First called Legionnaires Paris, the Martel Division, present mainly in Ile-de-France and made up among others of former members of the Zouaves Paris, had recently changed its name in reference to the battle of Poitiers in 732 during which Charles Martel put an end to the Arab invasion, reports the decree.