This partial autonomy, in turn, allowed Brittany to remain unaffected by most of the foreign and domestic conflicts that afflicted the French Kingdom throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This new transformed Brittany provoked bipolar reactions throughout the five new departments, as some overwhelmingly endorsed such fusion while others systematically rebelled against the fragile new Republic.

Attacks resumed on 30 October 1998 with the partial destruction of the Belfort city hall, home town of the then Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement.

Other subsequent targets included symbols of the French government such as administrative offices, police precincts and utility installations, as well as the home towns of then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

[2][3] The latter attack, which occurred on 18 June 1999, was a result of the refusal, two days before, by the then French President Jacques Chirac to ratify the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages.

[3] Three days after the heist, three ETA members were arrested near Pau, France, with a van containing two and a half tons of explosives, all originating from Plévin.

Two other individuals, Denis Riou and Richard Lefaucheux, were arrested for their complicity in the heist (renting cars to pick up the Basque separatists and providing them with shelter in Lorient).

[3] On Wednesday 19 April 2000, around 10 a.m., one and a half kilogram bomb placed near the drive-through of a McDonald's restaurant in Quévert, Brittany, exploded.

While none of them sustained any injuries as a result of the explosion, a 27-year-old employee, Laurence Turbec, was killed on impact as she made her way through a service entrance.

[2] The four men were ultimately acquitted of charges in the Quévert bombing, but they were sentenced the same day to serve prison terms (six, eight, eleven, and three years respectively) for their involvement in prior attacks.

Its affiliation with the latter has been repeatedly denied over the years by Emgann, which considers itself a pacifist group, although it openly supports the ARB's violent methods and goals.

It nonetheless publishes the ARB's messages and articles and substantial evidence has been produced by French authorities that confirms the suspected intimate and complicit relationship between the two groups.

While in the 70s many recruits came from universities and parts of the Breton elite, today most if not all are mainly drawn from either urban and unemployed youth, those living on welfare and those on limited and short term employment.

On 28 November that year, in Rennes, police defused a bomb with a nearby sign indicating the presence of an ARB explosive device.

[3] This financial support is provided by Skoazell Vreizh ("Breton assistance"), an original group headed by Pierre Locquet, who has been its president for over 20 years.

Upon capture, the perpetrator's family is contacted by Skoazell Vreizh to make arrangements in order to pay their legal fees.

Similarly, the POBL (center-right party) worried this might signal an ideological drift from the ARB toward a more violent type of radicalism, such as that of their ETA counterparts.