Seventeen men were arrested and placed in police custody after a wave of online hatred targeting the singer Eddy de Pretto, learned franceinfo Thursday March 10 from a source close to the investigation, confirming information from the newspaper Le Parisien. They are suspected of sending death threats and homophobic slurs to the singer. In June 2021, Eddy de Pretto performed in the Saint-Eustache church, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, after an invitation from the “Qui va piano va sano” festival. He shared a video of the concert in a “story” on Instagram and received – according to his own estimates – 3,000 malicious messages on social networks.
A few days later, he replied on Twitter that “These homophobes, royalists, far-right anarchists will never win. Love always wins”. He filed a complaint the following fall and the Paris public prosecutor’s office’s national center for the fight against online hatred opened an investigation. The social network Instagram cooperated with the authorities to find the perpetrators. Investigators used the same method as for the Mila case to identify them. A total of 17 individuals identified as the authors of the most serious messages were finally arrested on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Varied profiles
They were taken into custody for electronic harassment, homophobic slurs and some for death threats. These men aged 20 to 30 are each in custody in their department of residence. Some in Doubs, Isère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Maine-et-Loire, Rhône, Côte-d’Or, Paris, others in Haute-Loire, Manche, Gironde, in Seine-Saint-Denis, in Yvelines and in Meuse, has listed the Paris prosecutor’s office. They have varied backgrounds, live in both rural and urban areas, but many are conservative Catholics.
Fifteen of them are summoned before the criminal court on October 3 and 4, 2022 for online harassment with total incapacity for work (ITT) for more than eight days, and some with the aggravating circumstance of having committed these acts because of the sexual orientation of the victim, said the Paris prosecutor’s office to franceinfo.