Océane Théard, with AFP 7:14 p.m., April 12, 2022

The representative of the national center for the fight against online hate on Tuesday demanded up to six months firm against six people, including four women, tried by the Paris Criminal Court for harassment and death threat against Mila.

The representative of the national center for the fight against online hate on Tuesday demanded up to six months firm against six people, including four women, tried by the Paris Criminal Court for harassment and death threat against Mila.

The prosecutor requested six-month suspended prison sentences for the only three defendants who showed up at the hearing, eight-month suspended prison sentences for two absent defendants and six months for the only one, also absent. , who had a long criminal record.

The court has set its deliberation for May 24.

Six people, aged 19 to 39

These six people, aged 19 to 39, had been appearing before the 10th Chamber since Monday for posting hate messages and calls for murder on Twitter against Mila, a young woman who was the target of online harassment after a video vehement that she published on Islam.

The defendants "showed at this hearing an inability to present a real apology and to question themselves", deplored the representative of the public prosecutor's office in her requisitions.

On the dock, 19-year-old Sorenza D., the only one to apologize to Mila, furtively wipes her eyes.

Mila, 18, looks at her detractors without blinking.

"If one day I meet this girl, I'll kill her with my own hands", had posted this frail young woman, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, on her Twitter account in November 2020. "At the time, I m 'I only expressed this way because that's how I was brought up, "explains the one who evokes an abusive father.

"Scapegoat for our cowardice"

Mila is "a scapegoat for all the values ​​that we adults have stopped transmitting, he is the scapegoat for our cowardice", argued Mila's lawyer, Richard Malka, who warned against the "trivialization" of cruelty on the internet and the risk of accepting "this language" as being "that of young people".

Like other defendants, Tristan J., a 19-year-old student, says he didn't think his tweet could reach Mila.

"For me, only my friends watch my tweets."

He had replied to a classmate that he had to "smoke it", to, he said, "make him laugh".

"Words have a meaning", scolded Me Malka on Tuesday. "For you, these tweets were nonsense, for her, it's torture".

Mila, 18, lives under police protection.

"She can't even have a dog because it would have to be taken out and she can no longer go out freely," said Me Malka.

On her bench, Mila, in a long plum dress and heels, is crying softly.

The young woman was the target of a "tidal wave of hatred" after responding in January 2020, when she was 16 and a half years old, to insults on social networks about her sexual orientation by through a vehement video about Islam.

The young woman, who claims her right to blasphemy, had attracted a new round of threats after the publication of a second controversial video, on November 14, 2020, in which she sharply launched to her detractors: "and last thing, watch your buddy Allah, please. Because my fingers in his asshole, I still haven't taken them out".

"Right to blasphemy"

"Mila never criticized Muslims, she criticized a religion," said her lawyer, recalling that the "right to blasphemy" was a fundamental right.

According to her lawyer, Mila has received more than 100,000 hate messages and death threats since her January 2020 video. Prosecuting and convicting cyberstalkers has helped reduce the number of hate messages directed at Mila. 

Last July, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced ten people to suspended sentences of four to six months in prison for "online harassment" and an eleventh, an 18-year-old young woman, for "death threats".

"My detractors can't stand the mere fact that I'm breathing," Mila said Monday at the opening of the trial.