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A man in France has been charged with threatening politicians by attaching their names to makeshift guillotines. He claimed it was in protest at the country’s Covid-19 restrictions.

A 50-year-old man from the southwestern Landes region will be tried in October for making “death threats against public officials,” a local prosecutor’s office said.

The suspect, who was identified through CCTV footage and detained on Thursday, set up dummy guillotines in the towns of Saint-Sever, Samadet, and Geaune last week. Sheets of paper with the names of 382 mayors were attached to the devices.

The listed officials had all put their names to a recent opinion piece in the Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, in which they had “saluted the courage” of the decisions made by President Emmanuel Macron, including the introduction of a health pass.

The suspect was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying the guillotines were made of wood and cardboard, and not intended to be perceived as a death threat. He said he wanted to “alert the mayors to the violations of fundamental freedoms by the government’s decisions” during the pandemic.