Heavy Metal Satanists Claim Attacks On French Christian Sites
June 21, 2007, 17 years ago
The following report is courtesy of Expatica.com:
A shadowy anti-religious group with links to heavy metal music has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Christian sites in Brittany in northwest France, police said Thursday.
Members of the group, which calls itself True Armorik Black Metal, or TABM, describe themselves as "extremist and anti-ecclesiastical" in a letter sent to local newspaper the Telegramme, which published excerpts on Thursday.
"We are going to strike again, again and again," warned the letter, in which the group's acronym is scrawled in blood-red letters over the image of an inverted Christian cross.
Police, who are hunting a group of Satanists they believe responsible for the attacks, said they were taking the letter seriously and had sent it for analysis by a specialised unit.
Graffiti of the letters ABM was found at nine Christian sites desecrated in recent weeks. Police believe the letters signify Aryan Black Metal, a Satanist movement which has links to heavy metal music, paganism and far-right politics.
Last weekend, the 16th-century Chapel of the Cross at Loqueffret near the remote tip of Brittany was gutted in a blaze, which left just the four walls standing. The doors of the chapel were forced, several original polychrome statues were destroyed.
Eight other Christian shrines - six roadside granite crosses and two fountains - were torn down or smashed last month in an area of the Finistere department near the popular holiday resorts of Benodet and Concarneau.
