Paris (AFP)
The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed on Wednesday a release and two convictions against the far-right essayist Alain Soral, retried in three separate cases for provocation to racial hatred.
The first issue concerns a photomontage with antisemitic hints, including Emmanuel Macron, broadcasted in February 2017 on Alain Soral's "Equality and Reconciliation" website.
In this picture, we see Emmanuel Macron arms raised in front of a globe, an arm surrounded by a Nazi-style armband adorned with a dollar instead of a swastika. All against the background of American and Israeli flags and photos of Patrick Drahi, Jacob Rothschild and Jacques Attali, with the slogan "On the march towards global chaos".
As in the first instance in March 2018, the judges of appeal considered that if this photomontage could "legitimately shock", it did not appear "sufficiently clear and unambiguous to aim at the whole of the Jews because of their origin or their religion".
The court has therefore confirmed the release of Alain Soral, whose real name is Alain Bonnet, 60 years old.
Condemned several times, including for provocation to racial hatred, he was retried for two drawings deemed anti-Semitic also published on his website, which earned him sentences of four months' imprisonment by the Paris Criminal Court in June 2018.
The court of appeal has confirmed a first suspended sentence, but without the fine, for a drawing representing four presidential candidates of 2017 in the form of pawns, on a chessboard dominated by the personalities Bernard-Henri Lévy , Julien Dray and Jacques Attali, against the background of Star of David.
This drawing "means, without hindsight or nuance, that the entire Jewish community jeopardizes democracy", and is indeed "an implicit exhortation to hatred, discrimination or violence against Jews," he said. the courtyard.
Another caricature published in July 2017 depicted various personalities in the form of crooked-hooked cockroaches, including new Jacques Attali, designated "Chief Cockroach" and wearing a Star of David.
This drawing also contains "an exhortation" to the hatred towards the Jews in their "whole", because "it invites undoubtedly to eliminate these harmful insects", raised the judges, which confirmed the conditional sentence to four months and 5,000 euros fine.
For these two drawings, the essayist will have to pay damages to anti-racist civil parties.
In its three decisions, the Court of Appeal recalled the recent jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation, which considers that the remarks complained of must contain "an explicit exhortation" or "implicit" to hatred or discrimination.
? 2019 AFP