Man charged over plot to assassinate Emmanuel Macron

A 23-year-old man has been charged with plotting to kill Emmanuel Macron during next week's Bastille Day parade.

Prosecutors in Paris told CNN he was aligned to the "extreme right" and wanted to murder the French President, as well as "blacks, Arabs, Jews and homosexuals".

In what the London Evening Standard described as a "Day of the Jackal-style plot", the man planned to shoot Macron with a Kalashnikov assault rifle while the politician took the salute at the Bastille Day celebrations on 14 July.

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US President Donald Trump will be among the guests of honour at the ceremony.

The man has been charged with plotting to commit a terrorist act after coming to the attention of the security services monitoring a video games forum, where he mentioned his search for a weapon.

Police said it was too early to say if he was linked to a wider network.

Bastille Day is the most important date in France's ceremonial calendar. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789, sparking the start of the French Revolution, and was also the setting for Frederick Forsyth's 1967 novel The Day of the Jackal, which portrays the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle.

In 2002, Maxime Brunerie, a neo-Nazi, fired at President Jacques Chirac during the Bastille Day parade, reports RMC radio. He was sentenced to ten years in prison before being released in 2009.