Friday, 7 July 2017

Days Of The Jackals

In a strange twist on the famous thriller book (and subsequent movie) Day Of The Jackal, a suspected far-right extremist has been charged with plotting to kill French President Emmanuel Macron at the Bastille Day parade later this month.

Day Of The Jackal
Day Of The Jackal .... Not Impossible Scenario.

In fact it turns out that this date - which is of course Bastille Day parade and commemorates the start of the French Revolution, and takes place on the Champs-Elysées avenue in Paris on the 14th of each July - is popular for assassination attacks.

  • In 2002, then President Jacques Chirac was the subject of a Bastille Day assassination attempt when Maxime Brunerie, a man with far-right links, took out a rifle and fired a shot before being overpowered by security.
  • In 2016, the truck terrorist killed 84 on Bastille day (but in Nice).

Of course the fictional attempt to kill French President Charles De Gaulle in the 1971 novel and film 'The Day of the Jackal' (by Frederick Forsyth), failed when the police finally kill the professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate the French president in the summer of 1963.

However it was based upon the true attempts to assassinate De-Gaulle. Especially the one that took place on 22 August 1962, when he and his wife narrowly escaped from an organized machine gun ambush on their limousine.

Fact and fiction seem destined to collide one day ....

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