The action never came to fruition but the project was very real. Seven ultra-left sympathizers tried for terrorist criminal associations were sentenced to sentences ranging from two years in prison to five years in prison, including thirty months with probation, by the Paris Criminal Court.
The heaviest sentence was inflicted on Florian D., who fought in 2017 with the Kurds of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Rojava (north-eastern Syria) against the jihadist group Islamic State. However, he will be able to benefit from a reduced sentence for the part of the prison sentence that he still has to serve. This sentence remains lower than what the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) had requested against him, i.e. a six-year prison sentence with a committal warrant.
Concern about the motivations for the judgment
Justice considered that he wanted to foment violent actions against the police, even if no successful plan was determined. One of his lawyers, Me Raphaël Kempf, declared after the decision was announced that he was “with relief that he was not returning to prison”. But he considered that the motivations were “extremely problematic”, worrying about the “extension to the political and militant sphere of the notion of terrorism that this judgment signifies”. “The judges clearly say that expressing criticism or resentment towards the police institution could constitute an act of terrorism,” he said.
The six other defendants were sentenced to two-year sentences, suspended to four years, including 25 months of probation. All are banned from contacting each other as well as banned from possessing a weapon for 10 years. “The aim of seriously disturbing public order through intimidation and terror” is “characterized by the desire expressed on several occasions (…) to undermine the integrity of police officers, to seize weapons”, or to “organize an armed militia”, declared the president at the start of the reading of the decision, before it was interrupted by demonstrations of discontent in the room. The hearing was suspended for about an hour and a half.