Eighteen months of suspended prison sentence were requested on Tuesday in Toulon against two young men who in June carried out “violent blows” to an elected EELV from Seyne-sur-Mer (Var) on the sidelines of a banquet of Reconquest activists premises in a campsite.
Aged 22 and 24, the two men, the first of whom is the son of the director of the Seyne-sur-Mer campsite in whose restaurant – under management – this meal of activists from the far-right party was held on June 11, 2023, and the second his nephew, admitted having respectively punched and kicked the elected environmentalist Hakim Bouaksa. Gestures that they both said they regretted at the hearing.
Broken arm and thirty days of ITT
For the two other defendants, the director of the campsite and the manager of his grocery store, also tried for “violence in a meeting” leading to an ITT (total incapacity for work) of more than eight days, the public prosecutor requested their release, for lack of sufficient evidence to establish their responsibility in the attacks on the elected official, which they formally contested.
“Even if we are cornered in a demonstration where we are insulted, we must never respond with violence because this has serious consequences”, underlined the prosecutor Eric Moretti for the perpetrators of the attacks. A thirty-day ITT was granted to the opposition elected official, who was injured in the face, neck and had a broken arm.
At the time of the events, the elected representative of Europe Écologie – Les Verts in La Seyne-sur-Mer participated with around thirty other people, including union activists and left-wing parties, in an undeclared gathering in front of the campsite “L’ Hacienda” in Seyne-sur-Mer where a banquet for local activists from the far-right Reconquête party was to take place. On the videos, we see several demonstrators systematically filtering cars trying to enter the campsite while chanting “welcome to the fascists” or uttering insults.
“It’s normal to disagree, we’re in a democracy. But we don’t have to prevent people from entering a restaurant by shouting at them and calling them “fascists”, it’s shocking,” said the president of the court, Marie-Laure Arnouil. “We were there to mark the occasion, in no way to prevent the meeting from taking place,” explained Hakim Bouaksa. “My only objective was to make these Éric Zemmour activists understand that in La Seyne-sur-Mer, there are people who are opposed to the racist and fascist values conveyed by the Reconquête party,” he said. for follow-up. The decision was deliberated on December 5.