Tarnac 9

The Tarnac Nine are a French group of nine alleged anarchist saboteurs: Mathieu Burnel, Julien Coupat, Bertrand Deveaux, Manon Glibert, Gabrielle Hallez, Elsa Hauck, Yildune Lévy, Benjamin Rosoux and Aria Thomas. They were arrested on November 11, 2008 in an operation carried out by French police throughout Paris, Rouen and particularly Tarnac, rural France. The operation resulted in twenty arrests, of whom eleven were released almost immediately afterward. The remaining nine who were held for questioning, and who on November 15 were variously listed as suspects and accused of crimes, then became known as the Tarnac Nine.

The group were "accused of 'criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity' on the grounds that they were to have participated in the sabotage of overhead electrical lines on France's national railways." In late October and early November of 2008, horseshoe-shaped iron bars were used to obstruct power cables of the TGV railways at locations throughout France, resulting in delays for about 160 trains. In particular, one instance of this occurred on November 7-8, 2008, in Dhuisy, Seine-et-Marne, near Paris. On the same night, Coupat and his partner Lévy were driving in the area, under police surveillance. Three days later, the arrests were made.

The group consists of five women and four men, aged from 22 through 34 at the time of the arrests, who are generally well-educated. Coupat was a former graduate student and is a political writer, having contributed to a philosophical journal called Tiqqun. Coupat's partner, Lévy, is an archaeologist. Others have been described as "a Swiss sitcom actor (Thomas), a distinguished clarinettist (Glibert), a student nurse (Hallez, an ex-partner of Coupat's) and Benjamin Rosoux, an Edinburgh University graduate who runs the (Tarnac's) grocer's shop and its adjoining bar-restaurant." At the time of the arrests, Deveaux and Hauck were also described as beginning graduate students in sociology and English, respectively.

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