The Paris Court of Appeal on Wednesday examined an appeal filed by three anti-racist associations against Jean-Marie Le Pen, former president of the National Front (FN, now National Rally), acquitted at first instance for comments made in 2014 against artists engaged against the FN. The Licra, SOS Racisme and the National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) had appealed the judgment of first instance, considering that the word “batch” used in reference to Patrick Bruel constituted a “provocation to racial hatred”. The court will deliver its decision on December 15.
In a video posted on his blog in June 2014, Jean-Marie Le Pen, now 94 years old, then an MEP, attacked artists committed against the FN such as Guy Bedos, Madonna and Yannick Noah. While his interlocutor advanced him the name of Patrick Bruel, the father of Marine Le Pen had commented with a laugh: “It does not surprise me. Listen, we’ll make a batch next time.
“Fournée refers to four which refers to the genocide of the Jews”
This word against a singer of Jewish religion has “an intrinsically anti-Semitic and racist significance”, argued Me Sahan Saber on behalf of the Licra, civil party, while his colleague Marie Mercier, counsel for SOS Racisme, also a civil party, considered that by targeting Patrick Bruel, “it is the Jewish community as a whole that is targeted”. “Fournée refers to four which refers to the genocide of the Jews”, she pleaded before qualifying Jean-Marie Le Pen as a “preacher of racist and anti-Semitic hatred”.
The representative of the public prosecutor’s office who had not appealed after the release of the former presidential candidate admittedly admitted that “the (incriminated) remarks are not innocent in the mouth” of Jean-Marie Le Pen but , she insisted, “they cannot be condemned”. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s lawyer, absent at the hearing, Me Frédéric Joachim, denounced “the nonsense of the procedure”, qualifying in passing the civil parties as “scavengers” and “vultures” against ” of a 94-year-old man.
“We can force the line, it’s grotesque”, he said before proceeding to the exegesis of the word “batch” which, according to the lawyer, should not be taken in the sense of something to be baked in an oven, but in the figurative sense: “A group of people who are subjected to the same fate or participate in the same movement”. “Any other interpretation is malicious,” he said. The link that unites the people cited by Jean-Marie Le Pen is not their religion, said his side David Dassa-Le Deist, another defense lawyer, “it is their rejection of the FN”.