Terrorism charge for far-right Frenchman seen in Al Jazeera probe

A far-right activist in France has been charged with incitement to terrorism after being exposed in an undercover investigation by Al Jazeera.

Remi Falize, a former member of the Lille branch of Generation Identity, a French far-right group, was already facing charges of aggravated assault after being filmed by an undercover reporter for Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the northern French city of Lille.

The attack featured in a two-part documentary, Generation Hate, released last December.

The film shows Falize, 32, wearing gloves with reinforced plastic knuckles, striking the teenager four times on the head. Following the assault, Falize was filmed boasting about the attack, saying: “Girl or not, they’re just Arabs.”

Elsewhere in the film, Falize is recorded saying: “The day I find out I’ve got a terminal illness, I’ll buy myself a weapon and cause carnage.”

The target of the “carnage” would be, according to Falize, “a mosque” or Wazemmes market, a market in Lille popular with the city’s Muslim and Arab communities.

The Lille prosecutor laid an additional charge of inciting racial hatred and violence for far-right activist and co-defendant Etienne ‘Le Roux’ Vanhalwyn, 23, who also faces a charge of aggravated assault on the young Lille woman.

Shortly before the assault, Vanhalwyn was filmed making Nazi toasts in a bar with several far-right associates.

Falize and Vanhalwyn, along with Guillaume Dumont Saint Priest, 31, appeared at the Lille courtroom on Wednesday, where their lawyers requested a delay to May 2020 proceedings in light of the new charges.

Source: Aljazeera