Three are imprisoned for their participation in a plan to assassinate French President Macron.

Paris : (AFP) – Three individuals were convicted by a French anti-terror court in connection with a scheme by far-right extremists to attack President Emmanuel Macron.

The three men, who belonged to a Facebook group known as the “Barjols,” were convicted of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act after the court heard that they contemplated using a ceramic knife to stab Macron in 2018 during a remembrance of World War I.

Former mechanic Jean-Pierre Bouyer, age 66, received the heaviest penalty of four years in jail, with one year suspended. The maximum sentence for the offence is 10 years in prison.

On November 6, 2018, Bouyer and five others were detained in the eastern Moselle area. In his vehicle, police discovered a commando-style knife and an army vest.

Afterwards, firearms and ammo were located at his residence.

Two others detained with him were given brief jail sentences, but nine co-defendants and fellow Barjols members were exonerated. Another member received a suspended sentence for having a handgun unlawfully.

Since the trial began in January, the court has heard testimony of the Barjols’ alcohol-fueled gatherings and frequently racist internet exchanges in which they discussed migration, their fear of civil war, and their loathing of Macron.

The case also highlighted issues over the threshold at which internet plots and violent fantasies become criminal, with defence attorneys contending the prosecution lacked proof of a genuine intent to act.

“Interest with violence”

In a summary of her arguments earlier this month, the lead prosecutor referred to the organisation as a “incubator of violent conduct.”

Their beliefs may seem “eccentric,” but the “danger was genuine,” she said, adding that they were akin to Muslim radicals in their “fascination with violence” and hostility towards individuals they saw as adversaries.

After many years of Islamist atrocities in France that took hundreds of lives, especially at Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan music hall, the organisation was established on Facebook in 2017.

Lawyers for the defence attempted to depict their clients as marginalised and resentful French villagers, all members of the anti-government “Yellow Vest” movement that went to the streets in 2018 to protest Macron.

In their closing statements, defence attorney Gabriel Dumenil referred to the trial as a “judicial farce” while his colleague Lucile Collot contended that the prosecution of the group was “judicial overkill.”

Fanny Vial, a fellow defence attorney, recognised that some members of the group exhibited “hate,” but attributed it to “social suffering.”