The latter, who was hostage to the Islamic State organization for ten months in Syria in 2013-2014, had testified during the trial on April 20 of the "surge" of hateful tweets which he had then had to face "in 48 hours ".
These thousands of messages had appeared when Mr. Hénin, now specialized in advice on the fight against terrorism and Islamist radicalization, had called for reporting to Twitter and the Pharos platform (which is responsible in France for the fight against illegal content on the internet) tweets published by the father of a victim of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in France, Patrick Jardin.
Speaking about the return envisaged at the time of several dozen French jihadists detained by the Kurds, Mr. Jardin had written: "Shoot them", "let's also kill their children elsewhere".
His account having been closed, he then treated Mr. Hénin on another account as a "little left-wing informer journalist" and obtained the support of several figures from the far right.
Among the wave of tweets that then targeted Nicolas Hénin, a 21-year-old student, who is one of those sentenced, wrote: "Damn, but what a son of a bitch... he is the one who deserves the execution".
“I wish the next victim of terrorism is your kid,” tweeted another convicted defendant on Wednesday.
The court sentenced the five Internet users to two years of ineligibility.
Each will have to pay 1,000 euros in damages and 800 euros in legal costs to Nicolas Hénin.
"It's a great satisfaction, it's one more stone in the judicial building on cyberbullying", welcomed Me Eric Morain, Nicolas Hénin's lawyer, stressing that the latter expressed "his relief and his satisfaction ".
© 2022 AFP