Colmar (AFP)
The prosecutor's office in Colmar on Thursday demanded six months suspended prison sentence against the right-wing essayist Alain Soral for having posted on the Internet a photo of him performing a "quenelle" gesture equated to a sort of Nazi salute disguised.
The court reserved its decision on January 10.
The "quenelle" is an "anti-Semitic" gesture in connection with the "contempt" of the Jewish community, said the prosecutor of the Republic of Colmar, Catherine Sorita-Minard, who, in addition to this sentence with a set to trial, required the compensation of the civil parties (SOS Racisme, the Licra of Haut-Rhin and the Jewish Consistory Department).
She also asked for the publication of the judgment in the press.
Already convicted multiple times, Mr. Soral, absent at the hearing, "is in a state of recidivism" and "incites hatred of the other" by broadcasting on the internet his "deliberate, shocking and provocative" gesture, pointed the magistrate.
His real name Alain Bonnet, Alain Soral was prosecuted for "insult" and "public incitement to hatred or violence because of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion."
He posted on his Twitter account and on his website "Equality and Reconciliation" a cliché, taken May 5, showing him doing a "quenelle" on the steps of the court of Colmar.
The "quenelle" is a gesture popularized by the polemicist Dieudonné, condemned several times for anti-Semitic statements.
On his website, Mr. Soral, who had come to the Mulhouse region (Haut-Rhin) for a conference entitled "Pédocriminalité: networks and penal code", had accompanied the cliché of a text evoking the representative Council of Jewish institutions of France (Crif) and the Licra.
In April, a few weeks before his arrival in Alsace, he had been sentenced in Paris for denial to one year in prison with an arrest warrant.
However, this mandate had not been applied, as the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office found it without any legal basis in a case involving the right of the press. The Consistory of Haut-Rhin had asked for the arrest of Mr. Soral when he came to Alsace, in vain, and the essayist had held his lecture, before being photographed in court.
"Materially, this file is empty," swept his lawyer, Damien Viguier, pleading the release. The "quenelle" is nothing but an "arm of honor or a finger of honor" and not "an inverted Nazi salute," he said.
The civil parties claimed the conviction of the essayist, "multi-recidivist of hatred", according to Rodolphe Cahn, council of the Consistory. If the "quenelle" is not a criminal act "as such", its dissemination, however, is, he insisted.
Alain Soral "instrumentalise justice", thundered Jean-Christophe Loew (SOS Racism). "As long as we talk about him, for good or bad, it's buzz," he continued, lamenting "the cohort of civil parties not compensated" by Mr. Soral over his convictions.
© 2019 AFP