He had seized the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), after his conviction for the publication in 2016 on his website of a negationist drawing. The far-right essayist Alain Soral was dismissed on Thursday February 24 by the ECHR. Real name Alain Bonnet, he was sentenced for Holocaust denial, in 2019, to a 10,000-euro day-fine for a drawing published on his Equality and Reconciliation website and which referred to the controversy of Charlie Hebdo after the attacks in Brussels, Dad where are you ?.
On his site, the image, titled Weekly Chutzpahshowed Charlie Chaplin’s face in front of the Star of David, with the question “Shoah where are you?”to which bubbles responded “here”, “there”, “and there too”, placed in front of drawings depicting soap, a lampshade, a shoe without laces and a wig. An insert also indicated “confused historians”recalls the ECHR in a press release summarizing its decision “definitive”.
Decision Alain Bonnet v. France – the criminal conviction of Alain Soral for racial insult and contestation of crimes against humanity does not infringe article 10 of the Conventionhttps://t.co/3bPpOC7egL#ECHR #ECHR #ECHRpress
— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) February 24, 2022
Alain Soral claimed that this drawing was aimed at historians of the Second World War and not the Jewish community. He considered that his conviction violated his right to freedom of expression and therefore seized the court based in Strasbourg. The latter finally proved him wrong, believing on the contrary that the judges had “provided relevant and sufficient grounds” allowing to conclude “that the various elements (of) the contested drawing were directly aimed at the Jewish community”.
“The French authorities have already had to respond to remarks or speeches akin to Holocaust denial and revisionism when the Holocaust belongs to the category of clearly established historical facts”, note the pan-European judges. Moreover, while justice had ordered the removal of the drawing from Alain Soral’s site, the image “remains accessible online through search engines”further notes the Court, according to which “the harmful impact of the message conveyed” therefore remain “considerable”.