Next to the branch “ Parisian “Direct action, there is the branch” Lyonnaise »: Dozens of attacks and robberies, an unwanted ideology, marital abuse within the group. Back to ultra-left violence in the years 68.
The 1er May 1979, a commando machine gun the facade of CNPFthe main employers’ organization, attack claimed by an unknown illegal group: direct action. Among his four members, Jean-Marc Rouillan and André Olivier had met in 1977 in the health prison, incarcerated for terrorist-type activities, Rouillan for his alleged participation in violent actions, Olivier for having asked one of his former students the plans of military installations.
Spotted by general information, Rouillan and his partner Nathalie Ménigon were arrested in September 1980, but amnestied a few months later. They quickly resume their activities, made of robberies and attacks, with murders (in 1983) and assassinations made of composure, those of Inspector General René Audran (1985) and Georges Besse, the CEO from the Renault Régie (1986). The intervention of RAID In February 1987, in a farm in the Loiret where the four main members of direct action had taken refuge, put an end to their run.
The two direct action
The personality of André Olivier, of Lyonnaise origin, and the confrontation of two hypertrophied egos contributed to the bursting of direct action in May 1980, earlier than what was generally advanced. Rouillan then criticized Olivier the “ authoritarianism on members of his group ». The two branches keep the name, which police and magistrates will take time to understand.
The first, in connection with other European groups and calling itself anti-imperialist, is said to be “ international ” Or “ internationalist ». Although made up of many activists from the Southwest (Toulouse, Perpignan, Bayonne), it can be described as “ Parisian »In view of his establishment. As for the Olivier group, known as “ national branch “, He is sometimes called” Branch Lyonnaise By the origin of his activists and many of his actions (despite attacks often carried out in Paris, which contributes to leading the police). Note the existence of a sub-branch often confused with the Lyon group, “ The red poster “, Composed of activists from overseas who, in 1982, engaged in two attacks, two robberies, two failed attempts and an intrusion into a employment agency.
Also decide the more or less fantasized origins of the two groups. If the Parisian branch is the continuity of groups opposed to Francoism, the Lyonnais branch is presented as a result of the proletarian left left ; Most of its members claim it. In fact, with the exception of one of them, none of them really campaigned.
There GP was dissolved by the government in the summer of 1970, before self-directing three years later. André Olivier only approached this movement until 1972, arousing the apprehension of many activists worried about his lack of seriousness. Far from seeking instructions (and funding) at the Popular China Embassy, unit by their ability to perceive social subjects, activists of the GP are a singular syncretism characteristic of the years 68. The historian Philippe Buton created for them the aporia “ Anarcho-maoists “: According to him,” leftist leaders brought their activists to the Rubicon, but to fish there ».
In fact, in the first quarter of 1981, before the victory of François Mitterrand, the best known leader of the GPAlain Geismar, publishes The terrorist gear. He rejects “ The macabre procession, where terrorism leads to men, (who) is likely to make them deaf and blind, unable to seize, if the opportunity arises, of a real possibility of advancing (P. 130).
The pool
Born in 1943, André Olivier was appointed at the start of the 1971 school teacher at the Technical Lycée at the Boulevard des Czecoslovaques, in Lyon. He is quickly noted by an atypical education, for example a study of the comics in which he demonstrates that Gaston Lagaffe “ Door (…) damage to popular classes (P. 53), and provocations which earned him to be sent back from national education. It is around him that the Lyonnaise branch of direct action is formed. He recruited his partner, Joëlle Crépet, other activists but also former students, including Max Frérot.
If some are not very “ hot When they understand the activity of the group, the enrollment plays on the guilt of these “ little-bourgeois And on the progress of the required services: store books, hide a bag of equipment, then a bag of weapons, drive an automobile during a robbery, then monitor outside, then participate in it in the fist. Coercion is then a way to prevent the disciples from leaving the group, combining punches, belt, forcibleness, threats of mutilation, death, deprivation of food to unthinkable scenes: “ He had handcuffed me at a small table with another woman (P. 397).
An activist said she later “ bewitched by the lyrics “And it is possible to qualify Olivier de Gurou, which the diary and self -criticism of Max Frérot discovered by the police in a Polciciers and published in a ten -page insert reveals by ten -page in a ten -page. Release October 24, 1986: “ Me, Max Frérot, terrorist and “loose” ». Other members of the group have detached them with a certain lucidity: “ André Olivier was not an anar, he was a fanatic communist. He finally had power, he was the chief », Written one of them in a letter to his parents (p. 357). “” As I was a nurse, (Olivier) said that I was a whore at the service of capital “Explains Joëlle Crépet on his side (p. 396).
We can only note the strong presence of nurses in the group and to its margin (which is not the case in the Parisian branch) without being surprised: the formidable increase in hospital staff since the start of the fifth republic and the growth in the number of bachelières explain their presence in numbers in the generation that has engaged during these years. Note also the role of a sociologist, assistant at Lyon University II For ten years, before finding a post of philosopher in secondary school, which invited members of the group to its TD And of which some of the students and then high school students were recruited – and paid her from years in prison.
Violence
Since March 1980, the balance sheet of the Lyonnaise branch has been heavy: 34 robberies, 32 attacks (2 in Lyon, 30 in Paris), one of which makes a passer -by blind. 18 times, they use violence. Unlike the Parisian branch and other European terrorists, murder is not a deliberate choice of Lyonnais. Their first homicide was that of a fund conveyor in October 1980, during the robbery of a bank in the Lyon suburbs. Then, between 1981 and 1986, they killed three people without it being premeditated.
After the arrest of Olivier and most members in March 1986, Frérot continued alone and set a bomb at the Brigade of repression of banditry in Paris, killing a police officer before being arrested a little by chance. Very quickly, they perceive violence not as a necessity, but for the pleasure it makes them feel ; One of the chapters of the book is also entitled “ Adrenaline ». Against banking workers, one of their recommendations is that “ Makeup is important if you have to stop an employee (P. 316). Violence within the group cuts marital abuse: “ He hit me shuffleless with electric wire, it was horrible “(P. 397), explains to his trial Joëlle Crépet, a medical certificate of which mentions traces of cigarette burn” near pubis (P. 238).
This attraction for brutality is accompanied by an unwanted ideology and a need for reflection. The psychiatrist Michel Dubec, clerk for the expertise of Jean-Marc Rouillan, confides: “ At the beginning, I do not understand that he really adheres to the hollow sentences which he pronounces. I tell myself that this is a defense process. “The ideological confusion obviously appears in the words of Olivier, castigating in particular, during his trial, while he is defended by Jacques Vergès, the lawyer of Klaus Barbie judged in the same room a few years earlier,” bourgeois justice which is under the orders of the Jewish lobby (P. 385). Apart from this anti -Semitism, condemned by most activists, it would be artificial to try to find ideological differences between the two branches.
The question of sources
After being reported to the daily Lyonnais daily police section ProgressRichard Schittly is corresponding to World In Lyon, as was in his time Jean-Marc Théolleyre, one of the big names in legal journalism. Rigorous, the work benefits from a precise knowledge of the agglomeration. His book, which begins with Olivier’s arrest, reads like a novel (detective).
The question arises of course of its sources, especially since the many quotes are not referenced. Thanks provide the names of certain witnesses who “ have given their confidence and time »To the author. There is also talk of the archives of the judicial police (Pj). Some references to general information reports may suggest copies paid to the judge or Pjinsofar as important elements do not appear there. Perhaps this is what explains the very rapid treatment of olive’s involvement in the Red Rescue and the Gip (Information group on prisons), then Cap (Prisoner action committee).
It is all the more regrettable since the attendance of delinquents, with whom André Olivier has experienced some setbacks, was able to play a role in the passage to robberies. Likewise, it seems that Lyon officials of the GP were not interviewed. If one of them, a big name of sociology, introductory in France of the Chicago school, has died for twenty years, a close friend of Benny Lévy, the real leader of the organization, could have been prolix. On the occasion of the drafting of a work on the postal trade unionist Georges Valero, who was of this movement, the historian Denise Zederman and the philosopher Jeannette Colombel had reported the prevention of which Olivier was then the object.
Less publicized, without arrest giving rise to photographs or televised reports, having not been (with the exception of Frérot, once his companions under the locks) the object of type “ Wanted », The Lyon branch is less known, often approached superficially or fallaciously. While all the protagonists of the book – activists, journalists, police and magistrates – are dead or retired, the book will allow “ Forgotten with direct action To be a little less. Above all, by immersing us in this time, by brushing a portrait of the main characters and their movement, it shows that this end of the years 68 also generated fairly shabby monsters, with non -existent political consequences, far from the tragedies experienced by Germany and Italy.