Four years after that day of October 5, 2018, when the headquarters of SOS Méditerranée in Marseille was violently invaded by activists from Génération Identitaire, the trial opens this Monday before the Marseille court. If the far-right group has since been dissolved for incitement to discrimination, hatred and violence, its 22 members and sympathizers who participated in the action will have to answer the bar of the heads of “participation in a group formed with a view to preparation of violence against persons or destruction or damage to property” and “violence committed in a meeting followed by incapacity for more than 8 days”. The referral order also mentions the “sequestration” of the employees and volunteers of the humanitarian association present on the spot at the time of the intrusion.
Facts for which lis incur up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. The counsel for several of them, Maître Pierre-Vincent Lambert, told AFP that he did not wish to speak before the hearing. Today aged 22, for the youngest, at 39 for the oldest, the 19 men and three women who will be successively called to the bar come from all over France. Among the defendants judged until October 19, figure the media Anne-Thaïs du Tertre d’Escœuffant, known as Thaïs d’Escufon, ex-spokesperson of the movement. On the eve of the trial, from Toulouse where she lives, she refutes the violence and denounces a “web of lies” which is “political and not legal relentlessness”.
“A step has been taken”
Like him, several defendants were high school and university students at the time of the events. Rendez-vous had been given in Marseille, on the eve of an “orange wave” of solidarity in around sixty cities in France but also abroad; to save the Aquarius, the first ship of the association for the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
After having suddenly burst into the headquarters of the NGO, the activists of the far-right movement had unfurled a banner accusing SOS Méditerranée of being “complicit in the trafficking of human beings”. “Since our existence, we have experienced countless attacks to which we have always refused to respond, to focus on our rescue mission. A level has been crossed and we are obliged to react and to restore certain truths today”, declared Francis Vallat, president of SOS Méditerranée, shortly after during a press conference. He will be present Monday at the opening of the trial.