Eleven men go on trial in Paris this morning accused of carrying out a string of attacks in the name of the Breton Revolutionary Army, a minuscule, amateurish separatist group which killed a waitress in a bombing in April 2000. Six of the suspects have spent up to five years in pre-trial detention for 17 attacks committed by the group, known by its French initials ARB, from 1993 to 2000. The attacks, invariably carried out in the middle of the night, were mainly harmless and symbolic, targeting public buildings such as town halls and tax offices, mainly in the constituencies of leading government ministers.
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But four of the suspects face life sentences for the death of Laurence Turbec, a 27-year-old McDonald's waitress who died when a bomb blew up in her face as she opened a serving hatch at the fast-food chain's drive-through restaurant in Quévert, near Dinan, on the morning of April 19 2000. Among the accused are Gael Roblin, 31, the spokesman of the main Breton autonomy movement, Emgann, which the prosecutors claim provided the "theoretical justification" for the campaign, and Christian Georgeault, 48, the suspected ARB ringleader and former Emgann general secretary. All the suspects deny ARB membership and responsibility for the fatal attack.
Bretons have been fighting for independence ever since a wayward ruler of Brittany, François I, signed the Indissoluble Act of Union with the Crown of France in 1524. The region lost all administrative autonomy in the 1789 revolution, and Napoleon's obsession with centralisation and uniformity all but killed off Breton customs and culture. Worse, the Breton language, related to Welsh and Cornish, was effectively banned: as late as 1900, teachers in Brittany would beat pupils speaking it. But Brittany now has as much autonomy as, if not more than, any other French region, and its culture is blooming. An estimated 200,000 people speak the language daily, most town halls fly Brittany's black and white flag alongside the tricolour, and Celtic music festivals are more popular than nightclubs. This has tended to make the ARB seem absurd. Its members, thought to number 20 at the most, have been portrayed as a bunch of incompetent drunks: until Turbec's death, their 250-odd attacks since 1960 had claimed just two victims, both members killed trying to defuse bombs they feared might hurt someone. But its strategy changed radically in early 1999 when it developed links with the Basque separatist movement Eta and stole eight tonnes of explosives from a quarry.
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