In a move that is unsurprising by his reputation, Black Metal musician Varg Vikernes has reached out to his fans to raise funds to sue French authorities for the return of his guns which were confiscated following his recent arrest in France.
Vikernes is a Norwegian-born musician and apparently a hater of many things. He was arrested in 1993 and convicted of the murder of his bandmate, Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth, guitarist for Mayhem, as well as the arson of three Christian churches in Norway the same year. He served 16 of his 21 year sentence and now lives in France with his wife, Marie Cachet, whom he met while incarcerated, and their three children.
Now, apparently, he is acting out towards the French government after he was arrested and released on suspicion of planning a massacre and his guns and other paraphernalia were confiscated. His wife has also been charged and released in the alleged conspiracy. He claims that his rights are being infringed upon, that the French government is mistreating him and his family, and he had this to say on his blog,
The only problem is that we can not afford to sue them, and we see no other solution to this than to ask for help from you. It pains me much to do so, and I have struggled a lot with myself to make me do this, but I think this is the right thing to do right now. They have done everything they could to make sure we could not afford to sue, so I think they really don’t want us to. We ask for help to sue from you, from individuals probably not directly affected by this case, because we believe that we are fighting not only for our rights and freedom, but also for the rights and freedom of every other citizen in France, and perhaps also in other European countries, who also risk being subjected to this type of treatment in the future. We need to tell the authorities that we don’t accept this and that what they do is illegal. We can not allow them to abuse their power like that and get away with it. This time they did this to us, we don’t know what else they might do to us in the future if we just let them get away with what they did this time, and the next time it can be your neighbour’s turn. Or your friend’s turn. Or someone in your family’s turn. Or your turn.
According to his fundraising account on Bankeez, the convicted felon/murderer/neo-nazi has raised over $4,000 U.S.