Grenoble : These saboteurs of the ultra-left have been elusive for five years
Le Dauphiné, April 8, 2022
Suspected of some thirty destructive operations in the Grenoble region since 2017, teams of activists from the libertarian movement are keeping the investigative services in check. Why do the latter have the greatest difficulties to identify them? Pieces of an answer…
When, on November 26, 2019, 350 policemen and gendarmes search the libertarian squats of Grenoble and the ZAD of Roybon, the objective is clear: to give a kick in the anthill of the anarchist nebula and to see what will come out of the operation. It must be said that in the weeks that preceded this demonstration of force, the tension went up a notch in the offices of the hotel of the prefecture, place of Verdun: on September 30, 2019, the room of the municipal council of the town hall of Grenoble was burned, the attack having been claimed on the usual channels of the libertarian and anticapitalist ultra-left
That night, it is the symbol of democracy (that the libertarian doctrine considers definitively sold to capitalism and to the elected representatives of the Republic, even if they are ecologists and [or] of the extreme left) that was clearly targeted. In January of the same year, the studios of France Bleu Isère and the church of Saint-Jacques were totally destroyed by flames: all to say that there is an urgency to act.
“Preparation of a crime”
A few days after the passage of the steamroller of the public force in the anarchist and zadist camps, it is however necessary to return to the evidence: the operation is a judicial failure. On the other hand, one of the objectives of the gendarmes and police officers has been fulfilled: they have collected dozens of DNA samples, either by direct sampling or on objects belonging to the targeted persons. Do the investigators already have precise genetic elements taken from specific scenes of damage? Probably. But obviously, no DNA taken this November 26, 2019 is going to match with possible evidence.
April 2022: while after two years of relative truce, two attacks have just been carried out against electrical installations of Grésivaudan, some 25 cases already targeted by a judicial investigation remain unresolved. An investigation against X whose qualifications range from the “destruction of property belonging to others” to the “participation in a criminal association for the preparation of a crime”.
“Disconnected from the masses”
If investigative services such as the PJ and the research section of the gendarmerie are struggling to identify the activists who, for the past five years, have been multiplying commando operations against various and varied targets, it is first of all because, unlike organized crime, the ultra-left is very difficult to infiltrate with classic police methods: the total absence of financial stakes that can be used as leverage in common law cases, militant loyalty stretched toward a political goal, and the compartmentalization of small operational groups are all obstacles to penetrating this milieu.
“What we need to understand above all is that these are people totally disconnected from the visible mass of anarchist militants, whether they are from the squat current or the protesting libertarian ultra-left of the demonstrations that throws bolts at the police or stones in the windows of bank branches,” details a good connoisseur of the current cases.
“Quasi-professionals”
A certain consensus seems to be emerging, within the investigative units concerned, on the fact that the perpetrators of the most elaborate attacks act in twos or threes, that they frequently ride bicycles and that they are probably “of a high socio-professional level”, to use the words of one officer. “We face several fundamental difficulties: these actions are extremely prepared and carried out in a quasi-professional way, which is not always the case with common crime. It is impossible to exploit telephone or vehicle registration data, since they operate without telephones or cars! We believe that all these actions were carried out by a very small number of activists, who, perhaps, have renewed themselves over the years while passing on a certain “know-how””.
Shadows dressed in black
A policeman explains that the choice of the Grenoble region to carry out such a series of operations is probably not innocent: “They know that here, there is no potential for video surveillance to trace their route. Shadows dressed in black passing in the night on an anonymous bicycle, these are perhaps at the moment the only images – useless – that the gendarmes and police officers in charge of investigating this series of attacks have.
