PARIS, July 20: A French alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer was sentenced to two years in prison after making threats online and was suspected of wanting to target the Olympic torch relay, authorities said Saturday.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in a statement the 19-year-old man was convicted after a swift trial overnight Friday on charges of sharing bomb-making instructions on social media, posts inciting hate and death threats as well as posts with personal information that put people at risk.
The man — detained on Wednesday morning at his home in the Alsace region of eastern France — ran a group called “French Aryan division” on the social media channel Telegram, the statement said.
The prosecutor’s office said his alleged comments that triggered the probe by its unit, dedicated to fighting online hate, didn’t specifically target the Paris Olympics, which kick off with a high-security opening ceremony.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Wednesday anti-terror police detained the man and that he was an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer suspected of “a willingness to intervene during a stage, evidently, of the torch relay.”
The relay is nearing the end of its months-long trip around France and overseas French territories before the Games’ opening.
Darmanin, who is staying on in a caretaker role at the interior ministry until a new government is formed in the wake of legislative elections earlier this month, said the suspect has previously been flagged by police “for ultra-right ideas, which can be termed neo-Nazi.”
“We know that he had, a priori, a desire to hit political targets or people with immigrant backgrounds,” he said.
The French capital’s security operation for its first Olympic Games in a century involves up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, plus a 10,000-strong military force that is patrolling streets and sites in the Paris region and carrying out other security missions.
