The global reach of QAnon means more than belief in a web of conspiracy theories. In France, it ended in the kidnapping of an 8-year-old girl.
has now been tracked to 85 countries, and its beliefs have been adapted to local contexts and languages from Hindi to Hebrew.
One day, when Mia was 5, her mother took her out to play. The two never returned, said the lawyer, Guillaume Fort. It was a year before Montemaggi sent word about the child, Fort said. She urged others to join her and enlisted in a Telegram group for sovereign citizens in the Lorraine region. Montemaggi tended to leave short voice messages punctuated by a gentle laugh, trying to set up meetings, wishing people a happy New Year, or admonishing those she thought were insufficiently dedicated to the cause.
By the time the mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 this year, QAnon already had a solid foothold in Europe. At first, it was on the margins of protests against coronavirus lockdowns in Germany and Britain. But during the lockdowns, QAnonand turned darker, first in the United States and then across the Atlantic.
Daillet-Wiedemann’s name appeared 271 times in a QAnon Telegram group from October until April, when its chat history was scrubbed. Most of those mentions came amid a debate among the “digital soldiers” about whether his movement to overthrow the government was authentic, according to data shared with the AP by Jordan Wildon, an extremism researcher who archived the material before the chat history was erased.
The main planner went by the nickname Bouga and was an educator, according to his lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer. He vetted Montemaggi with an online questionnaire before organizing what he considered “a legitimate intervention,” the lawyer said. He declined to release his client’s real name for reasons of privacy.
There, Montemaggi waited in a black Peugeot with the other men. They caravaned to the Swiss border, then Montemaggi and two of the men entered the woods. Most of the men were arrested in France the next day. None bothered to hide their role or their conviction that the kidnapping was actually a restitution. One 58-year-old man compared himself to Arsène Lupin, the fictional French gentleman thief.