It is an understatement to say that Eric Zemmour has a busy schedule. Politically, perhaps not as much as he would like, but judicially, the appointments are piling up. Starting with this Tuesday. The former presidential candidate is expected before the 17th chamber of the criminal court for “defamation”. This time, it is the L214 association which campaigns for the animal cause which filed a complaint against him. In question, comments made in the Cnews program “Face à l’Info” in spring 2021. “There are people from L214 who tag butchers by calling them Nazis and saying that the farms are concentration camps. “extermination of Auschwitz”, he declared during a debate.
If a request for referral has been made in this case, no less than seven other trials await him in the months to come. A brief overview of the past, present and judicial future of the far-right politician.
Final convictions
Eric Zemmour is a regular in the courtrooms. His first conviction dates back to 2011 for having stated in 2010 on France Ô that employers have the “right to refuse Arabs and blacks”. The same day, on Canal+, the man persisted and signed, assuring that most of the “traffickers are black and Arab”, even adding peremptorily “that’s how it is, it’s a fact”. For these remarks, he is sentenced on appeal to pay damages to several associations fighting against racism. This condemnation will not push him to moderate his remarks. Quite the contrary.
In 2016, Eric Zemmour did it again. On France 5, this time, he affirms that “all Muslims” consider jihadists as “good Muslims”. And added: “For thirty years we have been experiencing an invasion, a colonization, which is leading to a conflagration. » These comments earned him a fine of 5,000 euros, the courts considering that they “targeted Muslims as a whole”. The conviction is upheld on appeal even if the fine is slightly reduced (3,000 euros). Eric Zemmour appealed to the Court of Cassation but it was rejected in September 2019. In the name of freedom of expression, he then turned to the European Court of Human Rights but was rejected at the end of 2022.
Coincidentally, it was at this same period that Éric Zemmour was convicted for the first time in a case which was not linked to his statements. He must pay 165,000 euros to several plaintiffs for the unauthorized use of film extracts in the clip announcing his candidacy for the 2022 presidential election.
When the Court of Cassation gets involved
As Eric Zemmour’s career moves away from journalism and towards politics, the pace of legal cases intensifies. Certainly, Eric Zemmour has obtained acquittals on several occasions. As when he declared in an Italian daily that Muslims “have their Civil Code, it is the Koran” or accused Cécile Duflot of having carried out “political revenge” with the Baupin affair. But the polemicist also had disillusionments.
Back in September 2019. Invited to the right-wing convention, Eric Zemmour gives a speech in which he mentions in particular “the Islamization of the street” and compares the veil and the djellaba to “uniforms of an occupying army” . Sentenced at first instance for insult and incitement to hatred, he will be acquitted on appeal. At the beginning of 2023, the Court of Cassation decides otherwise and breaks this release. A new trial should therefore be held shortly.
An identical scenario played out last week in the highest court. The former far-right presidential candidate claimed in October 2019 on the CNews channel that Marshal Pétain had “saved” Jews during the Second World War. About which he had been released on appeal. The court of appeal considered that, if the remarks “may offend the families of deportees”, they “are not intended to contest or minimize, even marginally, the number of victims of deportation or the policy of extermination in the concentration camps”. The Court of Cassation did not subscribe to this analysis and called for a new trial.
Traffic jam
This decision comes as the end of the year is marked by numerous hearings. On September 28, the Paris judicial court must deliver its judgment in a homophobic defamation case judged in June. The far-right polemicist estimated that LGBT and feminist associations had “enslaved the state apparatus”. Fifteen days later, he will be tried on appeal for having described unaccompanied minors as “thieves”, “murderers” and “rapists”, in 2020, still on Cnews. At first instance, he was fined 10,000 euros for provoking hatred. He will also be retried for having declared, in 2018, to television host Hapsatou Sy that his first name was an “insult to France”. In January, he was fined 4,000 euros for public racist insults. He had announced that he would appeal.
In 2021, in the middle of the presidential campaign, Eric Zemmour has multiplied the slip-ups. On February 8, he declared that “Trappes is a Muslim city governed by Islamic law […], it is a territory which is no longer French. The mayor files a complaint. In June 2021, the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) also attacked him for “public defamation against a public administration” after the latter considered that INED “tampered with the figures” by mentioning immigration. Words that will be judged in the months to come.