A man suspected of having prepared an attack in preparation for the passing of the Olympic flame in Bordeaux, scheduled for Thursday, May 23, was arrested by the police.
The worst was avoided in Gironde. A man suspected of planning an attack was arrested by the police. The suspect was planning a mass killing during the passage of the Olympic flame in Bordeaux this Thursday, May 23 according to information from Cnews. The arrest took place on the evening of Tuesday May 21 in Eysines, a town near Bordeaux. Since then the suspect has been presented to a judge, indicted for apologizing for crime and criminal association and placed in pre-trial detention.
“In police custody, the person concerned admitted to having considered committing an act, without a specific location, following an attack suffered. No reference to the Olympic flame was mentioned,” clarified the public prosecutor in Bordeaux, Frédérique Porterie, in a press release to AFP.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, confirmed in a message on X published this Thursday morning that an “individual planning violent action during the passage of the Olympic torch relay in Bordeaux was arrested”.
The arrested suspect is a 26-year-old man and is believed to be a sympathizer of the “incel” movement – a portmanteau for “involuntary celibate”. Supporters of the masculinist and misogynistic movement say they are incapable of forming romantic or sexual relationships due to their systematic rejection by women and consider women responsible for their celibacy. An ideology that leads to hatred of women.
The suspect’s proximity to the “incel” movement is suggested by a publication by the individual on Facebook reported on the Pharos platform which put investigators on the individual’s track. Investigators discovered a video in which the suspect refers to Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old man who is a follower of the “incel” movement and known for having perpetrated a mass killing in Isla Vista, United States, on May 23, 2014. The man killed six people and injured fourteen others before committing suicide. He had published a video to express his hatred of women before taking action.
The man arrested in Bordeaux would have been inspired by the mass killing of Elliot Rodger and would have prepared a plan for a similar attack. He had planned to commit a mass killing ten years after that of Isla Vista and then commit suicide according to comments he made while in police custody and reported by Cnews. The Bordeaux public prosecutor added that a “gun-cold revolver, several cell phones and a computer” were seized by police during the search. The suspect would be psychologically fragile according to his relatives cited by BFMTV-RMC Sport, but the psychiatric expert appointed to evaluate the suspect did not note any particular disorder according to the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office.