They are brilliant ex-students from bourgeois families who live in a farm commune in the green, empty, centre of France. To the delight of local people, they have revived the defunct village shop and bar. They are also, according to the French Interior Minister, "ultra-leftist-anarchist" subversives, members of an "invisible committee" plotting the violent downfall of capitalism.
Since nine of the alleged "terrorist grocers" were arrested one month ago, severe doubts have surfaced about the French government's allegations. Villagers at Tarnac in Corrèze in south-west France and parents of the suspects have campaigned for the investigation against the so-called "Tarnac Nine" to be dropped. The whole notion of an "ultra-left" terrorist threat is an absurdity, they say: the convenient fantasy of an "authoritarian", centre-right government.
Maybe.
But what of the explosives planted this week – a few days before Christmas – in Printemps, the Paris department store? All the evidence suggests that this bizarre incident was not the work of an Afghan group, as a rambling warning letter to the French news agency claimed. Investigators, and independent experts, said yesterday that the ageing, unfused, and therefore non-threatening sticks of dynamite found in a lavatory cistern were probably planted by a lone crank or by a would-be subversive group on the far left.
The French intelligence expert and former intelligence official Eric Dénécé believes that the evidence points leftwards. "[The ultra left] is a threat which should be taken seriously," he said yesterday. "There is a real resurgence of these movements, driven by groups in Germany, Britain and the United States.
"They attract relatively young people, who are often highly intelligent. They start off in eco-terrorism or in the most radical wings of the animal rights or anti-capitalist movements."
The evidence that the Printemps "toilet bomb" was planted by someone on the far left comes mostly from the language of the warning letter to Agence France-Presse. There were no religious references or Koranic texts. Instead, the letter spoke of "capitalist" stores and "revolutionary" movements – words never used by Islamist radicals.
Police sources indicated yesterday that the "Islamist" line of inquiry for the Printemps "bomb" had been more or less abandoned. They said that inquiries now concentrated on the possibility of a malicious stunt by someone with a grudge against the store or a "clumsy" attempt to spread fear by an extremist group, "probably on the left".
The evidence for an ultra left-wing Printemps plot is thin – so far. The evidence against the Tarnac Nine is equally thin – but intriguing. Seven of the "nine" have been placed under formal investigation by magistrates but released pending further inquiries. Two – the alleged ringleaders, a boyfriend and girlfriend, Julien Coupat and Yildune Levy, aged 34 and 25 – remain in custody, accused of "associating with wrong-doers with terrorist aims". Their parents have been refused permission to see them.
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