Far-left terror trainee may have set fire to Limoges city hall

The man suspected by investigators of setting fire to the 143-year-old, heritage-listed city hall of Limoges, France, has been arrested. The 34-year-old far-left activist was taken into custody by France's RAID special police unit at quarter past six on Tuesday morning, with the help of the Bordeaux unit, in Val-d'Issoire, in the Haute-Vienne department. The case is being investigated by the criminal police's counterterrorism directorate, while the national prosecutor's office responsible for terrorism cases is monitoring the proceedings. According to Le Figaro and Le Parisien, the man, who comes from the neighboring Creuse department, was on the "S List," which tracks individuals considered a risk to state security, because of his ties to the far-left movement; police were also already familiar with him over previous violence against law enforcement. French intelligence services therefore knew who he was and were keeping him under surveillance, but this did not stop him from setting fire to one of the city's symbols under cover of a nationwide protest.

City hall was set on fire on Saturday evening, October 17, the day of nationwide protests over the cost of living and the state of public services. According to the departmental prefecture, around six o'clock in the evening, masked rioters smashed the building's windows, broke in and started a fire, after having already set a municipal police car ablaze in front of the building. The flames spread to the roof structure, and during the night part of the building's tower and roof collapsed. The building, begun in 1879 and inaugurated on July 14, 1883, was severely damaged. Guillaume Guérin, the city's republican mayor, told Le Monde on Sunday that some five to six hundred far-left activists had mixed in among the roughly five thousand demonstrators, that the attackers had known in advance how to get into the building, and that the police did not have enough manpower and had to retreat before the rioters. About two thousand people gathered in the city's Casseaux district, more than five hundred of whom were specifically looking for confrontation: they attacked police officers with projectiles, four officers were seriously injured, and four police vehicles were destroyed. The demonstrators then also blocked the A20 motorway, and shops were looted around Rue Jean-Jaurès.

Limoges was only the most severe flashpoint of the wave of violence that swept across France over the weekend. According to the Interior Ministry, 550,000 people took to the streets, around 110,000 of them in Paris. Most of the demonstrators were peaceful, but in several cities violent groups attacked shops, public buildings and police officers. In Paris there was looting, police used tear gas and water cannon, and a Euronews crew was attacked and robbed by masked individuals at Place de la République. By Monday, around 2,400 people had been taken into custody. Emmanuel Macron said that "violence has no place" and that those who attacked prefectures, shops and city halls would answer for their actions. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promised that the Limoges city hall would be rebuilt, calling it "the symbol of a nation that lets itself be neither defeated nor intimidated." On Sunday, thousands of Limoges residents and local officials gathered in front of the ruined building to condemn the destruction.

The incident is also a reminder that European public discourse on political violence tends to be one-eyed. We rightly keep track of far-right violence, but far-left violence is often treated more leniently, as if the slogan of social justice granted a pass for destruction in the streets. In Limoges, however, it was not students and union members worried about the cost of living who set fire to one of the city's most beautiful buildings, but extremists known to and monitored by the authorities, who mixed in with the peaceful crowd and had planned in advance how to break in. Arson has no political color, because anyone who sets a 143-year-old heritage building ablaze is not fighting for public services, but destroying the very community in whose name they claim to act.

Fallow Ground