Five activists from the French branch of the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant Generation Identity (GI) movement were convicted on Thursday for their role in the occupation of the Poitiers mosque in western France in 2012.
Considered the group’s “founding action”, this represents a significant symbolic blow to the Identitarian movement.
The court clerk told The Washington Post that four of the five far-right activists received suspended one-year prison sentences and lost their civic rights for five years (including the right to vote), while the fifth received a suspended sentence and lost the right to run in elections.
Fines were also handed out amounting to almost €40,000.
The French GI was the first branch of the Identitarian movement, a network which has since spread across Europe and which has increasingly worked across European borders.
Most recently, this was evident in this summer’s ‘Defend Europe’ mission to disrupt NGOs working to save the lives of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean – a mission which HOPE not hate helped to significantly undermine.
In a statement on the French GI Facebook page, the group declared that: “The conviction of peaceful young citizens warning the French of the danger of the development of Islamism and massive immigration is particularly scandalous.”
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