these people appear to have been released, but things are still uncertain:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,...-377233,0.html
on the neofascist thing: a moderate republican would probably be part of the udf or maybe a gaullist. a democrat whose politics fall within the mainstream of the party would be most likely a gaullist or maybe--maybe--a conservative socialist.
george w bush and the right wing of the republican party these days in the states would map straight onto the front national--particularly in the kind of nationalism they espouse, and in the conflation of national and religious identities--the fn routinely argues that france is a christian/catholic country being destroy inwardly by those nasty muslims, for example---bsuhworld cannot go quite that far because for now they are in power, but the christian right has parallel arguments (aimed mostly at "secularism")....read some stuff by/about jean-marie le pen or bruno megret and the parallels are obvious---or have a look at the most recent of brigitte bardot's autobios (she was married to megret, but i don tknow if she still is) and you'll get a taste of it.
the parallel is pretty alarming, frankly.