(Paris) “He has soiled everything that I am”: the former “queen of influencers” Magali Berdah strongly questioned the rapper Booba on Monday before the Paris Criminal Court, where 13 people are being tried for having taken part of the massive cyberharassment of which she was a victim.
During a tense hearing, Mme Berdah, her voice sometimes broken by sobs, recounted the ordeal she suffered from May 2022 when she was overwhelmed on social networks with tens of thousands of insulting messages and death threats. “I was on the verge of throwing myself out of the window,” she said.
“Die”, “dirty bitch”, “scammer”, “you deserve to be decapitated and stoned”… Thirteen Internet users appear until December 5 for their alleged participation in this “pack” harassment.
Only six of them appeared in court on Monday, a point deplored by Mr.me Berdah. “I wish these people realized what they did,” she observed.
In total, this procedure concerns 28 defendants, 15 of whom must be tried for similar facts during two subsequent trials, in mid-December and then at the end of January.
Among the Internet users implicated, some are being prosecuted for having sent more than 70 hateful or offensive messages, others just one.
Booba’s shadow
PHOTO LOIC VENANCE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
The rapper Booba
The shadow of a 29e implicated, who is not concerned by this trial, hovered over a significant part of the debates: that of the rapper Booba, who launched in 2022 in a crusade against Mme Berdah and those he calls “influvoleurs” and accuses multiple scams against Internet users.
Booba, whose real name is Elie Yaffa, was indicted at the beginning of October in this case, and placed under judicial supervision, for aggravated online moral harassment.
Investigations concerning him continue.
Mme Berdah, 42, commercial director of the influencer agency Shauna Events, was accused by Booba of deceptive commercial practices. Reproaches which fueled a broader debate on the influencer sector, for which Parliament voted for regulation in June.
In this debate, “I was credited with all the scams in the whole world”, “I was made to look like a monster”, deplored Mme Berdah, who described at length the role that according to her Booba played in the flood of insults and threats that she received.
“One day, he relayed a link to a Telegram group where people were demanding that I be beheaded and burned alive, with my address,” she said. “I would have preferred that he beat me once and that I was left alone” rather than suffer such an outpouring of hatred “every day”.
Mme Berdah explained that she had to move twice, that her eldest daughter had been out of school, and that she had felt particularly alone during the ordeal.
“No one wanted to hear me anymore, I was no longer audible. I lost three quarters of my friends, because as soon as they appear with me, they are harassed.