The number of procedures linked to the violent radical ultra-right has been growing in recent years. This is the observation that the national anti-terrorism prosecutor, Olivier Christen, made on Tuesday, November 3, on RTL. The magistrate returned to the racist attack of October 23, in Trappes and La Verrière (Yvelines), which killed a 26-year-old black Frenchman, Pengo Bossio Wangi, and injured seven other people, four of whom seriously. The anti-terrorism prosecutor also counted 22 victims who were not physically hit, but whose “vehicle was hit by bullets” or who “were targeted without being hit”.
If "the main threat" in terms of terrorism in France remains "jihadist", that linked to "the violent radical ultra-right" is increasing, affirmed Olivier Christen. Between 2019, the date of the creation of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat), and 2024, "we had one or two procedures per year", he explained. Over the past two years, nine investigations linked to this movement have been opened, including four in 2026, a number never reached so far for the violent radical ultra-right, franceinfo learned from the Pnat, which did not wish to detail the cases concerned.
The Pnat specifies, however, that since its creation, 14 proceedings relating to the violent radical ultra-right have been judged, including one case before a special assize court for minors. At the end of this first ultra-right terrorism trial, called "Waffenkraft", four men belonging to the neo-Nazi movement were convicted, in June 2023, for having sought to attack several targets often targeted by the ultra-right, such as institutions, mosques, a synagogue, organizations such as Licra or Crif, or even figures from political parties, for example the rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The main accused, Alexandre Gilet, a 27-year-old ex-volunteer police officer, received 18 years of criminal imprisonment.
A “violent extreme right” fringe
"There has been ultra-right terrorism for a long time, of which not only the authorities are aware, but which is the subject of multiple prosecutions", underlined on France Inter, the day after the attack on Trappes and La Verrière, the former prosecutor of the national anti-terrorism prosecution Jean-François Ricard, who served between 2019 and 2024. "We succeeded at that time in preventing terrorist actions" and in "carrying out arrests of these small groups before they act,” he said.
Today the situation has changed. “There is a climate of discussions which creates tension (...). This can, obviously, create a general situation which can lead certain people to say that it is the right time to take action”, “because the situation, at a given moment, allows them to do so”, declared Olivier Christen on Tuesday. Terrorists, "whatever the ideological segment", are "opportunists", he added. The anti-terrorism prosecutor explained that the main suspect in the Trappes and La Verrière attack, Kévin Tessier, "had largely prepared and premeditated the facts, probably since the end of the summer, the beginning of September".
In police custody, the 39-year-old man, since indicted and placed in pre-trial detention, recognized the racist nature of his attack and having chosen to target Trappes, which in his eyes constitutes a "den of Islamists", using terms close to those used by Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN), in 2021. Kévin Tessier also had objects and stickers glorifying the RN at home, without however joining the extreme party right, announced the anti-terrorism prosecutor during a press conference on October 29.
So many elements which allow the Pnat to classify Kévin Tessier among the profiles of the “violent radical ultra-right”. “This is indeed the terminology that we use,” the anti-terrorism prosecutor confirmed on RTL. This is a classification of disputes relating to terrorism, specific to French justice. It designates people imbued with ultra-right ideology who decide to take action, or who are considering it, in order to consolidate their positions.
Racist and identity discourses which infuse
“In 1994, the central directorate of general intelligence (DCRG) constructed this category to clarify its sector of intervention,” recalls Nicolas Lebourg, historian specializing in the far right, in Le Monde. Thus, he underlines, “the ultra-right designates the violent or potentially violent segment of the extreme right, on which the DCRG would therefore continue its surveillance work”.
“It is clear that the political life of our country can have an influence on the propensity of some to take action,” analyzed, in July 2023, the former director of the general directorate of internal security (DGSI), Nicolas Lerner, in Le Monde. “The violence of the ultra-right has been a continuum since the 1970s, with more or less prosperous periods,” according to independent researcher Jacques Leclercq, author of the book The Menace of the Ultra-Right in France. Between nationalists, revolutionaries, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and even supremacists, “the ultra-right is a somewhat generic and practical term to put it simply, but which covers several realities,” he explained in June 2025 on franceinfo.
After the Islamist terrorist attacks in France in 2015, some of the activists of the Action des forces operationales (AFO) group, for example, "started to say that talking is not enough, that we must act", explained Nicolas Lebourg, in 2021, in "Additional investigation". The global Covid-19 pandemic was then the catalyst for feelings of hatred for the ultra-right. Since then, the movement has experienced a resurgence via social networks, where identity theses are infused, such as the racist concepts of "remigration" and the "great replacement", a conspiratorial idea put forward by the writer Renaud Camus on the alleged substitution of European populations by non-European immigrants. Speeches sometimes repeated on the sets of certain continuous news channels.
The racist attack in Puget-sur-Argens, a turning point
It is these racist speeches that Kévin Tessier was imbued with. This single man, who lived alone, probably changed in just under ten years. "Slightly isolated individuals, who are nourished by racist ideology, who drink in the prevailing discourse and who suddenly take action" are "those who worry us the most", and are difficult "to detect", noted the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez three days after the attack. On the contrary, small identity groups are more identified, and even quantified: in France, they have always numbered in the hundreds, according to historian Nicolas Lebourg, who currently counts around 350. In recent weeks, their presence has sometimes been detected on the sidelines of demonstrations linked to the social movement against government policy, without a terrorist risk being identified, which does not prevent us from observing the violence of these small groups.
Kévin Tessier's action is more in line with that of Christophe B., the main suspect in the attack perpetrated on June 1, 2025 in Puget-sur-Argens (Var). He had announced his intention to kill people of North African origin and Muslim faith in videos posted on social networks, before committing the murder of Hichem Miraoui, a 46-year-old Tunisian. A racist attack which marked a turning point. For the first time, the Pnat took up a case of homicide linked to the extreme right.
