The shadow of Didier Raoult will no doubt hover over this somewhat special audience. This Friday, a close collaborator of the famous professor of the IHU, the biochemist Eric Chabrière, appears before the eleventh chamber of the criminal court of Marseille, sued for defamation by the daughter of Didier Raoult, Magali Carcopino-Tusoli, and her husband, Xavier Carcopino-Tusoli for defamation and insults.
Specialist in vascular medicine practicing at Sainte-Marguerite hospital, Magali Carcopino-Tusoli accuses Eric Chabrière of being the author of virulent tweets against her. The doctor, in conflict with her father, had positions opposed to Didier Raoult on the subject of vaccination against the coronavirus or the use of hydroxychloroquine. Last July, with the help of her son, she even produced a small comic strip with the aim of combating received ideas against RNA vaccines, which was then posted on the Twitter account of the Public Assistance for Marseille Hospitals (AP-HM) .
“Magali, the ugly duckling of the family”
At the same time, as revealed The world, Magali Carcopino-Tusoli found herself the victim of cyberbullying. The hateful tweets of which she was the subject were aimed on the one hand at her professional abilities, such as “we relocated you to the drawing department” or “the piston of your recruitment, your husband, will burst into the open, big scandal”. They also targeted her father Didier Raoult, with whom the doctor has been in conflict for years. “Magali, the ugly duckling of the family unmasked, can we read in one of his messages. In a family of bright oaks, there are bound to be acorns. “Other tweets, again, accuse the husband of the doctor, obstetrician gynecologist, of adultery:” Magali, do you know that you are cuckold? Yes, of course, you can’t ignore it. The whole Timone knows it. So how do you go about accepting and screwing up your dad for the eyes of a pervert? »
These tweets were notably sent by an anonymous account called “Le Professionnel”. “There are dozens of people who know that The Professional is Eric Chabrière”, annoys the lawyer for the Carcopino-Tusoli spouses, Me Philippe Carlini. The professor was considered the right arm of Professor Raoult, when the latter was still in charge of the IHU. Contacted, his lawyer refused to answer our questions before the start of the hearing.
“My clients were waiting for an apology”
“People who hide behind a pseudonym on Twitter, it’s easy, abounds Me Carlini. We’ll see firsthand what he has to say. My clients had a very bad experience of this story. There is a family problem behind it. So we press where it hurts. My clients are both doctors, very invested and they have been dragged through the mud by very hurtful, abject messages, with a connotation linked to the exercise of their functions. Moreover, both benefit from the functional protection on the part of the AP-HM and the university. They have the support of their institutions. »
According to the lawyer, legal action was not Magali Caropino-Tusoli’s first option. “The facts are old,” he recalls. It’s been a year since we filed a complaint for defamation and insults. My clients were expecting an apology. They would have come, we would surely have stopped. But they did not come. It is obviously not in the personality of Mr. Chabrière… ”Coincidence of the calendar, this same morning, in this same eleventh correctional chamber, another Raoult case is heard, although it is a question, according to our information, of a remand hearing. Magali Carcopino-Tusoli’s father, Didier Raoult, is also suing a Grenoble doctor, Jean-Paul Stahl, for defamation. The latter accused the former director of the IHU of uttering “nonsense” and of having “falsified” his study on hydroxychloroquine.