Under surveillance since a first arrest two years ago, the suspects were arrested on Tuesday, and placed in pre-trial detention on Friday. These are the first arrests for a far-right attack project in Finland, according to the police.
Le Monde with AFP
Five men were arrested and detained in Finland for projected an “ultradroite attack” with the help of bombs and firearms, announced on Friday, December 3, the authorities. According to a Finnish Home Security Officer (SUPO), the five men, aged about 25 years old, show “accelerated financialist” convictions, a white supremacist movement wanting to strange racial division in society.
These are the first arrests for a far-right attack project in Finland, according to the police. The suspects, who live in Kankaanpää, a small town of 13,000 inhabitants in the southwestern country, were arrested on Tuesday. Friday, they were presented to a judge and placed in remand. Possible targets have not been unveiled, nor the detail of possible operating mode.
The five men were under surveillance since a first arrest two years ago, the police explained at a press conference. Searches conducted in December 2019 had found “a significant amount of firearms, ammunition and explosive,” said Commissioner Toni Sjölblom.
Possession of “Terrorist Equipment”
They have “accelerated ultradroite trends”, also explained the representative of Supo, Eero Pietilä. According to ultradroite experts, accelerationnist hope to generate the chaos of the interethnic conflict to trigger a large whites in the West. Groups were identified in several countries, but the movement is recent.
Finnish investigators have found in their possession of “terrorist equipment”, which, in addition to other investigations, “reinforces the impression that they have radicalized and gives reasons to suspect them of crimes terrorists, “they also reported.
The five men did not seem to advise in organized groups of the far right; Conversely, they were trying to stay discreet. “A small group like this, which idealizes terrorist violence, secretly works and their activity does not include links with publicly organized far-right groups”, according to Mr. Pietilä.
According to the inhabitants of Kankaanpää cited by the Finnish media, one of the suspects was described as a “skinhead” and two others known to be “neonazis”. The police showed a picture of one of the suspects posing with a big knife and a pistol, the eyes concealed behind a ski mask.
A survey of several months
The investigation must last several months, the prosecution having fixed the deadline of 31 March to decide on a possible charge. The arrest of the five men for “preparation of a terrorist act” had been announced earlier in the afternoon, without details. The Europol European Criminal Police Agency has been associated with the investigation.
In March, Finnish intelligence stated that the terrorist threat in this Nordic country of 5.5 million inhabitants was “high”, that is to say the second lowest level on a scale of four . However, the services have warned that the risk associated with the right extremism was “more worrying” than the previous year.
Projects of anti-terrorism attacks are rare in Finland. It was in 2018 that the accusation of “terrorism” was retained for the first time, after an affluent Moroccan asylum seeker, Abderrahman Bouanane, stabbed ten people, killing two, in the city of Turku in southwestern country.