Far-right French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour was fined Monday in Paris 10,000 euros (just over 14,000 Canadian dollars) for incitement to hatred for his remarks on migrant minors isolated.
Absent for the trial, as during the trial in November, this regular in legal proceedings was tried by the criminal court for having described unaccompanied minor migrants as “thieves”, “murderers” and “rapists” on television.
The one who is credited with fourth place in the first round of the presidential election in the latest polls (at around 13%) castigated this “ideological and stupid” condemnation.
He will appeal the judgment, announced his lawyer, Olivier Pardo.
“First because most of the time we won on appeal”, justified Me Pardo, then because the Paris Criminal Court “distorted the prosecution” by considering that Mr. Zemmour’s remarks “affected immigrants when they targeted unaccompanied minor migrants.
Already convicted twice
The controversial outings of Éric Zemmour, 63, have earned him over the past ten years fifteen lawsuits for racial insult, incitement to hatred or contestation of crimes against humanity.
Several times released, he was sentenced twice for incitement to hatred.
He was this time prosecuted for remarks made on September 29, 2020, during a debate on the program Facing the news, on the CNews channel, after an attack in front of the former premises of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
“They have no business here, they are thieves, they are murderers, they are rapists, that’s all they are, they must be sent back and they must not even come”, had– he asserted about unaccompanied migrant minors.
“Contemptuous, outrageous remarks” which show “a violent rejection” and a “hate” of the immigrant population and which have crossed “the limits of freedom of expression”, had estimated the representative of the public prosecutor’s office at the hearing in November.
“There is not an ounce of racism in Éric Zemmour” who only says “the reality”, sometimes in a “brutal way, with his words”, retorted Me Pardo, evoking “a political position”.
He had pleaded for release, believing that the citation for incitement to racial hatred did not hold because “unaccompanied minors are neither a race, nor a nation, nor an ethnic group”.
The court also sentenced the publication director of CNews, tried alongside Éric Zemmour as is customary in press trials, to a fine of 3,000 euros.
Thirty associations had joined as civil parties, including SOS Racisme, the Human Rights League (LDH) and the Licra (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), as well as around twenty departmental councils — unaccompanied minors being cared for by Childhood Social Assistance, managed by the departments.
Arié Alimi, lawyer for the LDH, greeted the press with an “important” decision. “Behind this media project, there is a political project, it is a project of hatred, he declared, a project which tends to stigmatize people because of their origin, because of their confession, of their race “.