The Nantes Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced two men to citizenship courses following a demonstration in 2018 in which Emmanuel Macron's model was hanged and burnt, a statement said on Wednesday. the lawyer of one of the defendants. The two defendants, aged 52 and 20, were sentenced to each carry out a citizenship internship, said Mr. Hugo Tran, the lawyer of the 50-year-old defendant, confirming information from Ouest-France .
A false trial on a place
They were present at a demonstration in Nantes on April 7, 2018, which brought together students and railway workers. A group of protesters organized a mock trial on a square, then hung a model of the head of state to a wooden gallows, before setting it on fire. Only these two men appeared yesterday for "contempt of a person with public authority".
The fifties, drunk at the time of the facts, admitted "to have bombarded the model", but without being aware that it was in the effigy of the President of the Republic, according to Me Tran, who pleaded the release of his client, whose criminal record includes several convictions. "The intentional element is not characterized at the time of the facts, its action had absolutely no purpose to knowingly undermine the dignity of the President of the Republic," he said. The other defendant was masked at the time of the events. He appeared at the hearing without a lawyer.