Breivik sympathizer arrested in France for planning ‘major terrorist act’

GlobalPost

A convicted murderer with links to Anders Behring Breivik, who police called a neo-Nazi, was arrested in France on Tuesday for allegedly planning a “major terrorist act.”

French police took Norwegian musician Kristian (Varg) Vikernes and his wife into custody after she purchased four rifles, Agence France-Presse reported.

“The DCRI (French domestic intelligence service) considered that messages he had posted on the internet expressed huge violence,” Interior Minister Manuel Valls told AFP.

“The purchase of weapons and cartridges by his wife showed that a terrorist plan was possible. To know more, to know what this plan could be … the DCRI considered it was important to arrest and question him.”

Vikernes, 40, has a sordid criminal history and used a website to support far-right politician Marine Le Pen.

He served 16 years of a 21-year prison sentence for stabbing to death another musician in the 1990s, BBC said.

Both were involved in Norway’s “black metal” scene, Vikernes as a guitarist.

"In 1991, 18-year-old guitarist Varg Vikernes founded one of Norwegian black metal's most important bands upon a simple, yet powerful, platform: to bring darkness into the world," a 2010 Guitar World magazine article said, BBC reported.

Vikernes was also involved in burning down several churches in Norway, and police suspect he was involved with similar crimes in France, according to Euro News.

After his release from prison in Norway, he emigrated to France and had been living in a remote, countryside town Salon-la-Tour.

He was living in a rented home with his 25-year-old wife, Marie Cachet, and three children.

Breivik mailed a copy of his xenophobic manifesto to Vikernes before striking out on a mass killing spree in Oslo two years ago.

Dressed as a policeman, Breivik first detonated a bomb before boating to an island and shooting dead dozens more.

More from GlobalPost: France vows crackdown on far right after attack

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