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In a circular sent Monday, the Minister of Justice ordered magistrates to use this legal tool against any attacker targeting a person of the same religion on the grounds of a defect or lack of practice.
The Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti wants magistrates to consider religion as an aggravating circumstance when an attacker targets someone from his own community of believers. In a circular addressed to magistrates on April 29, and that Le Figaro was able to consult, the Minister of Justice urges them to use this legal tool which already exists in article 132-76 of the Penal Code. A decision which comes after the observation by the chancellery of a change in the nature of attacks of a community or religious nature.
“Until now, this aggravating circumstance was used instead when the perpetrator hit the victim because they were Jewish, Muslim or non-Muslim. There, we have more and more facts carried out by an author because he accuses his victim of being a bad Jew, a bad Christian, a bad Muslim., we explain at Place Vendôme. These are attacks carried out “for a certain item of clothing that the person is not supposed to wear, or for such a thing that he is not supposed to eat, or because he should not have eaten on a certain day”specifies the chancellery, which says it notes a “shift towards a type of aggression which judges the intensity or sincerity of the practice”.
At the beginning of April in Bordeaux, an attacker of Afghan nationality, dressed in a qamis and a keffiyeh, killed two people and injured a third with a switchblade knife, accusing them of their consumption of alcohol during Eid . The two men, of Algerian nationality, were in fact drinking beer on the Quai Richelieu. Also in Montpellier, young Samara, 13, was the victim of school harassment by teenagers who criticized her for wearing makeup and dyeing her hair, and allegedly called her “kouffar“.
Firm and rapid criminal response
This circular, announced by the Prime Minister in mid-April and distributed yesterday to magistrates, also recommends that they use the offenses created in 2021 within the framework of the law reinforcing respect for the principles of the Republic, which punish “offenses committed because of membership or non-membership of a religion”. In other words, separatist faults, such as“a man who refuses to allow his wife to be observed by a female doctor, or who demands to have access to a person of the same sex in the public service”, we explain at Place Vendôme.
For this type of offense, the chancellery requests a “firm and rapid criminal response”particularly when they take place in a public space or in a school environment.
Finally, the ministry recommends that prosecutors contact representatives of religions at the local level, in order to obtain reports or information more effectively. “We must include them in our professional environment, because they can allow us to detect firm signals and report reports much more quickly”explains the ministry to Figaro.