Action Directe

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Action directe
Dates of operation	1979–1987
Motives	Proletarian revolution
Active regions	France
Ideology	Anarchism Anti-fascism Anti-imperialism Autonomism Maoism Marxism-Leninism[1]
Political position	Left-wing
Notable attacks	Assassinations of René Audran and Georges Besse 1979 Attack on the HQ of Conseil national du patronat français 1986 Paris police station attack
Status	Defunct
Size	180–200 "militants and [close] sympathizers" during its existence[2]
Means of revenue	Robbery

Action Directe (French pronunciation: [aksjɔ̃ diʁɛkt]; AD; lit. 'direct action') was a French far-left militant group that originated from the anti-Franco struggle and the autonomous movement, and was responsible for violent attacks in France between 1979 and 1987. Members of the group considered themselves libertarian communists who had formed an "urban guerrilla organization". The French government banned the group. During its existence, AD's members murdered 12 people, and wounded a further 26. It associated at various times with the Red Brigades (Italy), Red Army Faction (West Germany), Prima Linea (Italy), Armed Nuclei for Popular Autonomy (France), Communist Combatant Cells, Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, Irish National Liberation Army,^[3] and others.

The Elisabeth Van Dyck Command was a branch of AD that assassinated French Army General René Audran, on 25 January 1985. He was the Director of International Affairs (DAI) at the General Directorate for Armament (DGA). The team was named to commemorate Red Army Faction (RAF) member Elisabeth Van Dyck.

The command was created as a combined extension of both the AD and RAF. The AD appeared to take care of the organizational side of the command, and so naming it after a memorialized member of the RAF makes sense if they were seeking to at least publicly have a unified front. Both the RAF and the AD were actively pursuing their shared goal of political autonomy within their home countries, with the RAF based in Germany and the AD in France.^[4] These groups' goal of political autonomy did not stop with their own countries however, and they often fought against their own countries' governments in the pursuit of what they claimed was 'political autonomy', or political freedom, for the world's working class.^[5]

The command had only one claimed attack, the assassination of French Army General René Audran on January 25, 1985.^[6] At the time of his death, Audran was a senior-level official in the French Ministry of Defense, specifically the Corps of Armament. The Elisabeth van Dyck Command took credit for the assassination via letter.^[5] In the letter the members explained that they had killed Audran because he was the head of French's foreign arms sales and they believed that his "military and economic function is at the heart of the strategic imperialist project".^[5] The project being referred to is what the AD and RAF believed to be NATO and its supporting European countries' goal of homogenizing the world into a capitalist culture, and that as they progressed along this goal it would widen the gap in power and wealth between the upper class and working class.^[5]

In December 1981, AD member Lahouari Benchellal, known as Farid, was arrested for forging traveler's cheques, which were an important income source for the organization, in Helsinki, Finland. He hung himself while in the custody of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service in January 1982. AD did not believe Benchellal killed himself, and they named a direct action group after him.^[7]

There is an ongoing campaign by some sections of the French far-left calling for the parole of the still imprisoned AD members, who consider themselves political prisoners. In December 2007, Jean-Marc Rouillan was allowed a state of "semi-liberty", able to leave prison for extended periods. In September 2008, a Parisian court called for the revocation of his status after he declared in an interview with L'Express that "I remain convinced that armed struggle is necessary at certain moments of the revolutionary process".^[8][9]

A sport climb in Frankenjura, Germany is named Action Directe after the group.

• Anarchism in France
• Autonomism
• Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions
• Revolutionary Front for Proletarian Action

• Dartnell, Michael (1995). Action Directe: Ultra-Left Terrorism in France 1979-1987. Newberry House, London: Frank Cass and Co LTD. pp. 1–4. ISBN 0-7146-4566-4. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
• "France: Government must apply international standards to Action directe four" (PDF). Amnesty International. 31 January 2001.
• Protestation devant les libertaires du présent et du futur sur les capitulations de 1980, Jean-Claude Lutanie, (originally published in 1981 under the pseudonym Un Incontrole, no publisher, re-published in 2011 by Editions Lutanie)
• Segaller, Stephen (1986). "Action Directe, Ideologues of Violence". The Times (London) – via lexisnexis.com.

• Sites campaigning for the release of the Action directe convicts:
  • www.action-directe.net (in French)
  • Campaign for the release of Action directe prisoners (in French)
• elhajoui (8 February 2014). "Protestation Devant les Libertaires du Present et du Futur sur les Capitulations de 1980". Situationniste Blog. Archived from the original on 20 August 2018. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
• https://socialhistoryportal.org/sites/default/files/raf/0319850125_0.pdf
• https://books.google.com/books?id=yLH0BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA232
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/3119083/Terrorist-group-Action-Directe-founder-does-not-regret-murders.html
• "Action Directe" July 2018. Retrieved 10 May 2019. (The commando's one attack is listed under Action Directe in GTD.)