Seizure for cruelty to animals, justice dismisses the SPA



No mercy for the bulls. The Nîmes criminal court dismissed the Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) on Monday, which had filed a complaint for “cruelty to animals” or complicity against the torera Léa Vicens, the organizer of bullfights Simon Casas and the city of Nîmes. The association will have to pay the legal costs amounting to 4,000 euros.

The defendants, for their part, were dismissed from their claims for damages. During the hearing, on June 30, the lawyer of the SPA Me Nicolas Huc-Morel had qualified the bullfight as “a distressing and barbaric spectacle”.

“The SPA uses the court for its own communication, forgetting the legal criterion”, retorted in defense of Simon Casas, Me Jean-Pierre Bigonnet who had unsuccessfully demanded the conviction of the association for “abusive procedure”.

The prosecution had not made any requisitions.

Since the end of 2019, the SPA has launched similar actions in Dax (Landes), Carcassonne (Aude) and Béziers (Hérault) with the stated objective of “making people talk” about this controversial practice in order “to obtain its abolition”. She was also dismissed in Bayonne in November 2020 and then in Béziers in May.

“It is undeniable that the blows carried by the picadors cause great suffering to the animal with the established aim of deliberately attacking its physical integrity, the blows being knowingly carried out with a powerful weapon piercing the body. of the animal. These are acts of cruelty ”, just like the repetition of the poses of banderillas and the killing with sword and dagger, had underlined the court of Béziers in its judgment.

But he had invoked the existence of a “justifying fact” which implies that the provisions of article 521-1 of the Penal Code punishing acts of cruelty to animals “are not applicable to bull races with or without wagering. to death ”when an unbroken local tradition can be invoked.



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