The Islamologist Tariq Ramadan threatened with a trial for rape finds his name in another case judged on Thursday February 9, but this time, he appears there as a victim. The most surprising is that one of his accusers, Henda Ayari is on the same bench of the civil parties. The facts must be judged before the correctional court of Saint-Brieuc (Cotes-d’Armor). The defendant is a hyperactive Internet user on social networks who has developed an obsession with the Ramadan affair and is accused of widespread harassment.
>> Tariq Ramadan case: a new expert report concludes that the Islamologist has a psychological hold on the complainants
Yann Le Mercier, 48, lives with his parents in a small village between Paimpol and Saint-Brieuc in the Côtes-d’Armor. He has worked for several years in the maintenance of horses in a castle in the area. On Twitter and on other social networks, he acts with an account in his name, but also with a number of aliases: “baron rouge”, “baron noir”, “baron 888”, “Chevalier d’Aunay”, etc. . The facts for which he is on trial today in Saint-Brieuc took place between 2020 and 2022: sending malicious emails, harassment, and even fraud through the opening of online pots.
It was by opening an online kitty displayed as being for the benefit of the Génération Identitaire movement, an ultra-right movement that Yann Le Mercier initially stood out on social networks in 2018. It was before this organization is dissolved by the government. At the time, she had just been fined 75,000 euros after an operation to block the way to refugees in the Hautes-Alpes. In several of his tweets during this same period, Yann Le Mercier did not hide positions hostile to migrants and support for ultra-right ideas.
Obsession with the Ramadan case
At that time, the Ramadan affair had just broken out (Henda Ayari, the first accuser filed a complaint in October 2017) and Yann Le Mercier behind his screen in the room he occupied with his parents began to take an interest in it to the point of becoming visibly obsessed with it, to the point of knowing all its developments in detail.
Yann Le Mercier attempts a rapprochement for several weeks with the first accuser of the Islamologist Henda Ayari, opens a kitty for her. She thanks him for defending himself against the many followers of Tariq Ramadan who do not fail to challenge him strongly on Twitter. Then over the months the ex-Salafist who became a secular and feminist activist seeks to free herself from this support which becomes excessive, cumbersome. Yann Le Mercier will then put his energy into writing hundreds of daily messages to him on Twitter. Messages that had become hostile and arrived at 6 a.m. She also says that he then started to call her constantly on her cell phone, on the landline, to leave her text messages in series.
“My client has felt threatened in recent years, comments Nathanaël Majster lawyer of Henda Ayari. He explains that his client was pushed into depression “by this harassment on an exceptional scale, of a cruelty rarely equaled”. “This man contacted his professional managers, made him lose a job, managed to isolate him from his family circle.” Yann Le Mercier also published false conversations he allegedly had with Henda Ayari, explaining that he had a romantic relationship with her.
“Harassment of relentless regularity at all hours of the day, with a frightening professional know-how which demonstrates that harassment with such quasi-professional know-how has become a profession.”
Nathanaël Majster, lawyer for Henda Ayariat franceinfo
The man is also accused of attacking Tariq Ramadan, multiplying malicious messages. He must also answer for the harassment of a fervent defender of the Islamologist, the psychologist Fanny Bauer-Motti, witness in the case of alleged rapes. Yann Le Mercier is notably accused of having disseminated numerous nude photos which he attributes to the young woman.
Some of the tweets from the Breton forties could imply that he had access to several parts of the Ramadan case investigation file. “For us there is no doubt, he has access to at least part of the file given the allusions he makes. He has a more than disturbing knowledge of this file. This man is harmful”, comments Me Ouadie Elhamamouchi, lawyer for Tariq Ramadan and Fanny Bauer-Motti. Yann Le Mercier went so far as to write to the investigators and the investigating judge in charge of this case.
A lawyer in the sights of the defendant
Yassine Yakouti, a Parisian lawyer, has also filed a complaint against Yann Le Mercier and will be on the bench of the civil parties at Thursday’s hearing in Saint-Brieuc. He has no connection with the Ramadan affair. But the lawyer also accuses him of a daily denigration on Twitter, malicious calls on his mobile and on his landline, repeated messages to his relatives, his colleagues, his wife. Me Yakouti evokes a “industrial harassment making life impossible for many months”. The malicious Internet user, when he targeted Yassine Yakouti, explained that he was acting in defense of an ex-lawyer (disbarred from the Hauts-de-Seine bar) with whom Me Yakouti was in conflict.
Each time Yann Le Mercier chooses a target, the person targeted sees his reputation tarnished and is seized with fear as the man becomes omnipresent in his life. Me Yakouti remembers in particular telephone calls with at the end of the line “hellish howls”.
He does not act alone according to his victims
Objects of numerous complaints, the forty-year-old was heard last December by the gendarmes to whom he replied at least, explaining that the supposed harassed were in fact his harassers.
Since this interrogation and especially his placement under judicial supervision in December with a ban on approaching or communicating with the complainants, Yann Le Mercier has seriously slowed down his digital activity, but has not completely stopped it. He continues to tweet about the Ramadan affair from a new account intended to be a parody account of Henda Ayari, named “HondaAyaroshima”.
The various people who have lodged a complaint to denounce this harassment by Yann Le Mercier have the feeling that the latter is not acting alone, that he is being manipulated by principals. For this reason some of their lawyers will request additional information or file other complaints against these “sponsors” they suspect.