The elected Catherine Blein here on May 4, 2017 during a trip by Marine Le Pen to Brittany. – DAMIEN MEYER / AFP
“Killing in New Zealand: an eye for an eye …”. It was with this short tweet that Catherine Blein commented on the far-right terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch. Perpetrated on March 15, 2019 by Australian Brenton Tarrant, sentenced to life in prison in 2020, the attacks left 51 dead and 49 injured. On the day of the tragedy, the former elected member of the National Front and regional advisor for Brittany had published this message on her personal Twitter account causing a torrent of indignant reactions. Several complaints had been filed. This Tuesday, the Rennes Court of Appeal confirmed the guilt of the elected official, sentenced for apologizing for terrorism, but reduced her sentence.
At first instance, the criminal court of Saint-Brieuc (Côtes d’Armor) had sentenced Catherine Blein to a one-year suspended prison sentence and declared her ineligibility for three years. The elected official appealed against this decision. This Tuesday, she saw her suspended prison sentence turn into a fine of 1,500 euros pronounced by the Rennes Court of Appeal. His ineligibility for three years was confirmed.
Excluded from the FN for Islamophobic remarks
Excluded from the National Front in 2017 after homophobic and Islamophobic messages on social networks, the elected official appealed against her conviction, considering the sentence “extravagant”. The regional council of Brittany where she sat had lodged a complaint, as did the French council for Muslim worship and Ouahid Bassid, elected from the city of Meaux. His tweet had been withdrawn and a hundred reports had been sent to the Pharos platform.
Heard in 2019, the elected representative explained that she wanted to “draw a parallel” with the attack on a Coptic church in Egypt perpetrated a few months earlier. She defended herself from any apology for terrorism and had explained that she did not think that her message could “create a controversy”. She had however clarified that she was only fighting “Islamist terrorism”, “the only one” she knows, referring to “an isolated act” to describe the massacre in Christchurch.
The court of appeal was more lenient, relying on the absence of prior conviction of the defendant. “In view of the personality of the author of the tweet, which it is not established that she had been unworthy before, the words justify the pronouncement of a fine,” argues the Court of Appeal in its judgment . The regional councilor had already published insulting messages on her Twitter account such as: “Shame on Islam that must be eradicated from our soil as a precautionary principle”. But these messages had not been prosecuted.