Christophe Lavigne, the French airforce sergeant with far-right links who was recently acquitted on a technicality of planning to shoot Muslims, is still to stand trial in June on a charge of desecration of a place of worship in connection with a terrorist enterprise, in connection with an arson attack on a mosque in Libourne in August 2012.

Despite his having reportedly admitted to that crime, Lavigne has been released on bail, according to his lawyer, because the court accepted that he poses “no risk of reoffending”. The Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France wants to know how an individual with such a record, charged with a violent terrorist offence, could possibly have been allowed out.