BREAKING: Automatic Weapons in French Riots — What's Actually Out There?

A potentially dramatic escalation in France’s ongoing unrest: automatic weapons have reportedly been found in the hands of rioters, including individuals allegedly close to Islamist circles.

Lara Tchekov, a journalist with France’s Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), reported that Kalashnikov rifles and Scorpion submachine guns capable of automatic fire had been found in the possession of rioters.

According to Tchekov, the information came from sources within the DGSI, France’s domestic intelligence and security agency.

The individuals involved reportedly included both minors and adults, described as being close to Islamist circles.

Automatic Weapons in French Riots — What’s Actually Out There

Short answer: the claim exists, the denial exists, and the two are sitting in the same news cycle. That’s the tell.

The Claim Itself

French outlet Le JDD reported that Kalashnikovs and Scorpion submachine guns — both full-auto-capable — were found in connection with rioters, including minors.
The report attributes the information to DGSI (French domestic intelligence).
A journalist named Lara Tchekov pushed it on X, adding a detail that matters more than the guns: some of the individuals were never arrested.
i24NEWS ran it in English under “weapons of war spotted in the hands of looters.”

The Denial

DGSI “formally denies” that rioters had automatic weapons during the October 17 violence.
That denial went out through state media (franceinfo / France Télévisions).

How to Read This

Here’s the structural problem, and it’s the same one you see everywhere:

The same agency is both the alleged source and the issuer of the denial. DGSI is cited as the leak’s origin and as the entity formally denying it. That’s not a contradiction you can resolve from the outside — it’s a closed loop. Either:

The leak was real, and the denial is a credibility-management move (riots + automatic weapons + no-go neighborhoods is a political grenade), or
The leak was bad, and the denial is honest.

You cannot tell which from press releases. What you can observe:

Timing — the denial came fast and through the state broadcaster, not through independent corroboration or a court record.
The detail nobody’s addressing — the claim that some armed individuals were not detained. If that’s true, it’s not a rumor problem, it’s an operational problem, and no denial statement touches it.
Precedent — during the 2023 riots, a Marseille gun shop was looted and hunting rifles walked out the door. Police themselves said “we have crossed a red line.” Weapons circulating in French urban unrest is not a novel concept, it’s a documented one.

The Broader Pattern

Element	Official Line	What’s Observable
Automatic weapons present	“Formally denied”	Leak + counter-leak, no independent verification
Arrests made	Vague	Some reportedly not arrested
Response	Curfews, “massive penal response”	Emergency powers floated “if useful”
Source integrity	DGSI both leaks and denies	Circular, unverifiable from outside

Bottom Line

Treat the JDD report as unconfirmed but not dismissible, and treat the DGSI denial as a statement by an interested party, not a resolution. The honest position is: something was reported, it was denied by the same apparatus that allegedly produced it, and the press is treating the denial as the end of the story — which is exactly how these things get buried.

If it’s true, it reframes the riots entirely. If it’s false, the denial should be trivial to substantiate — show the seizure logs, the arrests, the inventory. Absent that, “formally denies” is just a word.

Watch for: whether any of this surfaces in court filings, whether the “not arrested” claim gets walked back or quietly confirmed, and whether Le JDD stands behind its sourcing. That’s where the truth will actually show up — not in the denial.

BREAKING: Automatic Weapons in French Riots — What’s Actually Out There?