In front of a courthouse.

(illustration) -

SYSPEO / SIPA

A trial "between Le Corbeau and Dupont-Lajoie", in the opinion of a lawyer cinephile.

The Lyon court on Friday condemned the author, anonymous until his arrest the day before, with a torrent of racist abuse and death threats addressed to the mayor of Givors.

In the box, Patrick Dupont, 60, son of a soldier born in Mali, was much less inspired than in writing, stammering a few words, in a voice barely audible behind his mask, in response to questions the president or civil parties.

His letter sent at the end of August to Mohamed Boudjellaba, new DVG-EELV city councilor of this town of 20,000 inhabitants near Saint-Etienne, spread over four pages, hateful and violent.

"Get the hell out of your way if you don't want to burn like a merguez", "you are going to have war", "we still know how to use a machine gun", "you know how it looks like a bomb in a house, It's boom ”, wrote the defendant in a red pen - found during a search.

Confused by other letters of the same type

It was not his first missive.

Since 2018, a resident of Givors, the secretary of a migrant aid collective and a lawyer from Lyon who frequently defends foreigners had received, after publication in the local press of articles about them, similar letters - "old woman bitch, you only have the scum to defend, ”threw the anonymous sender to the lawyer.

When the mayor of Givors posted the mail he had received on Twitter, the raven's first victim, 30-year-old Chmassa Mehaoua, acknowledged some formulations.

She had suspected the companion of a racist neighbor but her complaint was dismissed in 2019.

The person, who had threatened in writing to "cut her throat", her and her four children, by evoking the attack of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, was finally arrested Thursday and tried Friday in immediate appearance.

Hair cropped on the head, T-shirt "work, drink, sleep", the eyes a little empty, Patrick Dupont recognized the facts without difficulty.

"But why write this?

», Asked the president of the court.

"I went crazy," he defended himself, "desperate" by his unsuccessful requests for social housing adapted to his heart problems for which he receives a disability pension of 860 euros per month .

"I'm sorry to have done that, I will do more," he added, apologizing to the victims.

A bit short for his judges, who tried several times, in vain, to bring him to ideological ground: "I have no religion, no party (...) It's not being racist, the problem he is not here.

I have no hatred ”, assured the defendant.

"Investigators, he said he had the feeling of being abandoned by society, this feeling of injustice, it is the problematic of the file", tried to explain his lawyer, appointed.

The court followed the prosecution's requisitions by pronouncing a sentence combining six months of firm imprisonment, carried out at home under an electronic bracelet;

and six months of probationary suspension for two years, with injunction of care, citizenship internship and obligation to compensate the victims.

Society

Suspected of having called "bougnoule" the mayor of Givors, a sixty-year-old tried this Friday

By the Web

Treated "bougnoule" and threatened with death, the mayor of Givors Mohamed Boudjellaba files a complaint

  • Justice

  • Letter

  • Givors

  • Death threats

  • Racism