The artist’s lawyers told AFP that they had identified “individuals or identity groups who sent hate messages, even after the concert was canceled”.
Claimed flag bearer of the LGBT + community, Bilal Hassani was forced to cancel a concert scheduled for April 5 in an old church desecrated for 500 years, in Metz (Moselle). Explaining that the artist had been the target of hate messages, his lawyers declared, on Saturday April 29, to have filed a complaint with the city prosecutor, for “public and direct provocation to commit a crime or an offense”, “provocation discrimination, hatred or violence”, “threat and harassment”.
“It’s a simple complaint against X to which we have attached all the identifying elements on which we want the investigators to focus”, Isabelle Wekstein and Clara Steg told AFP. “We have identified individuals or identity groups who sent hateful messages, even after the cancellation of the concert, towards our client”, they added.
The lawyers say they are continuing their “ant work” scouring social media. “When a violent tweet has 500,000 views, we cannot consider that there is no responsibility behind it”, they argued.
Complaints against far-right movements
As of April 6, the Metz public prosecutor’s office had seized itself and had opened an investigation against X on the counts of “threats of offence” and “incitement to hatred or violence against a person because of sexual orientation” and of “public and direct provocation not followed by effect to commit a crime or an offense”, had declared the assistant public prosecutor, Thomas Bernard.
On April 12, in the show Daily, Bilal Hassani declared that he had filed several complaints for incitement to hatred, violence and discrimination, in particular against the far-right movements Aurora, Civitas and the “discussion nation Metz” group.
For their part, the associations Stop Homophobia and Mousse had also already filed a complaint against the association of traditionalist Catholics Civitas for discrimination on the basis of gender identity.