French justice on Wednesday sentenced seven people to fines of up to 800 euros (about $ 925) for posting anti-Semitic messages on Twitter against one of the finalists of the Miss France beauty pageant.
During the gala broadcast in December, the young April Benayoum, Miss Provence, assured that her love of geography was perhaps due to her origins: her mother is Serbo-Croatian and her father is Italian-Israeli.
These statements generated a wave of hate messages on Twitter. “I vote against the Jew (…) Miss Provence is Israeli, this bitch (…) I boycott Israel,” the president of the court read during the trial in September.
During the process before a court in Paris, the defendants admitted to having written these messages, but none acknowledged their anti-Semitic character. Some indicated that they acted on behalf of the Palestinian cause.
But, for the magistrates, the messages, “both by [su] content as by context “, they did express” a rejection of the person because of his origin “or” his supposed religion “and pointed” directly “to Benayoum.
The justice thus imposed fines of between 300 and 800 euros (from 347 to 925 dollars) to these four women and three men, as well as the payment of one euro in damages to the woman and various anti-racist associations.
Four of them must also attend a two-day “citizenship course”, according to the court ruling. The prosecution had requested two months of conditional prison for the convicted and for an eighth man, who was acquitted.
Benayoum’s lawyer, Jean Veil, said he blamed Twitter itself for allowing offensive tweets to remain visible for several days, adding that a separate lawsuit had been filed against the platform.
