Paris (AFP)
Six months after his controversial arrest, the journalist Gaspard Glanz is tried Friday in Paris for "outrage" after having made a finger of honor to police, during a demonstration of "yellow vests" in the capital.
The 32-year-old reporter, head of the Taranis news media, appears for "contempt of any person holding public authority".
He was placed in police custody on April 20, after being arrested in the Place de la République, in full mobilization of "yellow vests" for their act.
On a video broadcast on YouTube, he was seen apostrophic law enforcement and claim to have been targeted by a grenade of désencclement. The journalist then gave them a finger of honor after being pushed by a police officer.
His lawyers, Raphaël Kempf and Aïnoha Pascual, will plead for the release.
"If the finger of honor is established materially (...), there is a context where Gaspard Glanz had just shot himself in the leg coming from the police and he wished to complain, considering himself a victim of police violence, "Kempf told AFP.
"Faced with this impossible dialogue with the police, he had this gesture of humor," he says.
The lawyer is also moved by "the way the procedure was conducted", denouncing a "form of relentlessness" against his client.
The reporter, who specialized in social movements, was first placed under judicial control, banned from appearing in Paris on May 1 and Saturdays, but this measure was lifted a week later.
The arrest of Gaspard Glanz had aroused strong reactions and projected the reporter on the front of the media scene.
Trade unions and journalists' societies were outraged by "an infringement of the freedom to inform" and denounced a "general repression" on journalists covering the movement of "yellow vests".
This arrest had made react to the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who said he was "attached" to the freedom of the press, while hammering that "the law is the same for all" and that "nothing authorizes a journalist or someone who claims freedom of the press, to provoke or insult the police ".
© 2019 AFP