Letter from Paris/Lara Marlowe: Were it not for the violent death of a young woman, the Breton Revolutionary Army's (ARB) seven-year bombing campaign might have been almost comical.
Eleven alleged members of the ARB are standing trial here over the next three weeks. They plotted their bombings during drink-sodden evenings in the An Distro pub in Fougères, the anti-terrorist Judge Gilbert Thiel wrote in his 148-page charge sheet. They were often so inebriated that when they placed the devices, many failed to explode.
All are charged with "destroying or damaging the property of others or complicity therein, in connection with a terrorist undertaking." Four of the accused could face life sentences if found guilty of the April 2000 bombing of a McDonald's near Dinan, in which a restaurant employee, Laurence Turbec (28), was killed.
Between 1993 and 2000 the alleged ARB members are believed to have carried out 40 bombings, mostly against public buildings like tax offices and gendarmerie stations. Sufficient evidence was found to charge them in 17 cases.
Judge Thiel mocks one of the ARB's demands, for the transfer of responsibility for road safety from the French police to Breton civilians. The demand "would have been more credible if our investigation hadn't found that many of the activists had drunk driving records," he wrote.
All 11 defendants were members of Emgann, the political wing of the ARB.
Though they deny belonging to the ARB, two of the accused, Emgann's former spokesman, Gaël Roblin (31), and its former national secretary, Christian Georgeault (48), were caught handing an ARB statement denying the group's responsibility for the McDonald's bombing to a journalist in the street.
Circumstantial evidence links the ARB to the McDonald's bombing: the method of wiring and traces of explosives found on the site. The bombers used dynamite stolen in a joint Breton-Basque operation the previous year.
The death of Ms Turbec so shocked Breton sympathisers that Emgann's membership dwindled to 250 and its founder called on it to "self-destruct".
Although in prison and on trial, Mr Roblin is standing in local elections at the end of this month on a ticket called "Brittany, a Future." Emgann this week issued a statement condemning "the French state which still turns a deaf ear to the legitimate expectations of Bretons, answering them with contempt and repression."
The ARB was founded in 1968 and modelled itself on the IRA. Security sources believe Breton nationalists occasionally provided safe houses to their "Celtic cousins", but there is no evidence of extensive collusion.
Members of the "Real IRA" retained their Breton contacts when they broke with the Provisionals in the late 1990s. In 2001 a "Real IRA" team returning from Croatia in a camper van carrying weapons called a Breton for help when the van broke down.
The ARB is not known to have any links with the five Bretons arrested last November on suspicion of helping the "Real IRA". All were released within days, but remain under investigation. Two Irishmen in their 20s were arrested in Dublin, then freed on bail. Security sources expect at least one of the Bretons and the two Irishmen to be tried for terrorist offences.
The Breton suspects used to attend Sinn Féin ardfeisheanna. In May 2003 they met in Ireland with Mr Seamus McGrane, a deputy leader of the "Real IRA".
When the two young Irishmen visited the town of Guincamp in Brittany last summer, the Bretons allegedly helped them scout for suitable places to hide weapons.
The IRA was cited in a different context on Monday, when the friends of Ms Nathalie Ménigon played a recording of the imprisoned former member of the extreme left-wing group Direct Action at a press conference.
"I'll be another Bobby Sands if I have to," Ms Menigon said. She has spent the past 17 years in prison for participating in two murders and observed a 10-day hunger-strike to demand transfer to hospital.
Ms Ménigon's friends have joined forces with the supporters of Mr Cesare Battisti, an Italian who was arrested in Paris on February 10th.
Mr Battisti, a former leader of the Italian group Armed Proletarians for Communism, was convicted in absentia of involvement in several robberies and murder in the 1970s. Though he has lived in France since 1990 as a concierge and writer of detective novels, Italy wants to extradite him.
Some 600 people demonstrated in favour of the Breton accused. Six thousand signed a petition for the liberation of Mr Battisti. The socialist-run Paris town hall says it has placed the imprisoned Italian "under the protection of the city" and demonstrators will today march from the Hôtel de Ville to the Palais de Justice on behalf of Mr Battisti.
Lesson: when in difficulty with French justice, it helps if you committed your crimes a long time ago, or if you write books and are friendly with left-wing intellectuals who feel romantic about political violence.
Mr Patrick Raynal, Mr Battisti's publisher at Gallimard, told Le Monde he feels brotherly towards former Italian extremists.