The new novel Les Événements (The Events), by the French author Jean Rolin, tells the tale of a France that has descended into a chaotic and multifaceted civil war involving jihadist, nationalist and Marxist militias, in various and fluctuating combinations, as well as remnants of the regular army. Among many incredible details described in the book, perhaps the most incredible concerns an Algerian Islamist who is convicted of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack on the Eiffel Tower. Having served his jail term, the convicted terrorist’s expulsion from France is blocked by a European court, and, consequently, he ends up being housed at the public’s expense in a two-star hotel in the scenic Auvergne. There, he lives comfortably on welfare payments, before, one day, he takes the keys to the car of the hotelkeeper’s wife, and drives off to points unknown.

The most incredible thing about Rolin’s story is that it is true. The Algerian Islamist in question is one Saïd Arif, a jihadist veteran who is reputed to have been a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2006, Arif and more than two dozen co-defendants were convicted by a Parisian court of having plotted to carry out terrorist attacks on French soil in 2001 and 2002. French investigators found evidence that the conspirators were planning to use chemical weapons in the attacks. According to the deposition of one of the suspects, the Eiffel Tower figured among the list of potential targets. French prosecutors have also linked Arif to the so-called Frankfurt cell, which had been planning to carry out an attack on Strasbourg’s famous Christmas market, before the plot was broken up in late 2000.