The Court of Cassation cancels an acquittal of Eric Zemmour, who will be retried for public insults and incitement to racial hatred

The far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour will be retried for a diatribe against Islam and immigration pronounced in 2019. The Court of Cassation having canceled, Tuesday February 21, his acquittal pronounced in September 2021. The highest court of the judicial order ordered a new trial before the Paris Court of Appeal for the former presidential candidate, who will therefore be retried for public insults and incitement to racial hatred.

“We will face the new audience”, reacted to AFP Eric Zemmour’s lawyer, Olivier Pardo. During a political meeting called “Convention of the right”, organized by relatives of the former far-right deputy Marion Maréchal, on September 28, 2019, Eric Zemmour gave a speech castigating immigrants “colonizers” and an “Islamization of the street”.

Remarks “coming within the provisions of the law”

At first instance, the Paris Criminal Court considered that these remarks constituted “an exhortation, sometimes implicit sometimes explicit, to discrimination and hatred against the Muslim community and its religion” and sentenced Eric Zemmour to a fine of 10,000 euros. The Court of Appeal had, on September 8, 2021, reversed this judgment and acquitted the polemicist. The appeal judges had considered that none of the disputed remarks prosecuted was aimed “all Africans, immigrants or Muslims, but only a fraction of these groups”. The general prosecutor’s office and anti-racist associations, civil parties during the trial, had lodged appeals in cassation.

For the Court of Cassation, the words of the polemicist “means immigrants of the Muslim faith coming from Africa, i.e. a group of people determined both by their origin and by their religion, falling within the provisions of the law”.

“The Court of Cassation gives a real lesson in law to Eric Zemmour. It was not fooled by the truncated presentation of his remarks which had misled the Court of Appeal. The intervention of the polemicist during the ‘Convention de la right’ must be considered globally and not piecemeal”, reacted to AFP Patrice Spinosi, lawyer for the Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples. For its part, the association SOS Racisme “welcomes this decision and will once again be a civil party in the upcoming new trial”, she said in a statement.