At the Paris judicial court,
For several months, the same dialogues have tended to be repeated before the 17th chamber of the judicial tribunal. On the one hand, there are these defendants – young people for the vast majority – sheepish and “ashamed”. And on the other side, a court, magistrates and lawyers who wonder about the violence of their remarks tweeted from accounts which, very often, do not bear their true identity. This Wednesday, the scene was once again played out in front of this room.
Eight Internet users – four men and four women – were tried for “aggravated insult” after posting tweets targeting April Benayoum on the evening of the Miss France contest. A racist character that none of the defendants recognized at the bar. On December 19, the young woman who wears the colors of Provence talks about her passion for geography on the air. An interest that she justifies by her cosmopolitan origins: French citizen, of Serbo-Croatian mother and Italian-Israeli father. The evocation of this state of the Middle East will trigger on Twitter a wave of hateful and anti-Semitic messages.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a backdrop
Nine months after her tweet, 23-year-old Jasmine B. assumes. Certainly, she concedes having “reacted sharply” on the evening of the show. But when she heard the word “Israel” in the competition, she said she was “surprised”. “Promoting Israel, which is a country that does not respect human rights […] it went against my political convictions, ”explains this podiatrist. On her account, the young woman had written: “Miss Provence, I boycott in fact, are you crazy, Israel ??”. Origins, which according to the defendant, April Benayoum “should not have claimed” before adding: “I would have done the same for Saudi Arabia or Qatar which are Muslim countries […] I didn’t want to take it out on a person. “
At the helm, she is not the only one to evoke the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to defend herself. Julien H., 33, a history graduate and father of two, told him of his incomprehension: “I saw on Twitter personalities of the Jewish faith addressing the geopolitical conflict while we were in a beauty contest. “. Among these personalities, he explains, is Bernard Henri-Lévy. Julien H. then tweets: “#AprilBenayoum the wailing wall live on Twitter. La Licra, the great Jews of this world, BHMerde and so on, all crying for a change ”. His reaction, which he considers “awkward”, has “obviously not been understood”, he believes. Another young woman, born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, explained to target the Serbo-Croatian and non-Israeli origins of April Benayoum to justify the following tweet: “Miss Provence has lost 1000 points with her maxi bitch origins”.
“To forgive will be more difficult”
Sitting a few meters from April Benayoum, present at the hearing, most of the defendants wanted to “apologize” and said “regret” their messages. Among them, Ahmet I., prosecuted for having described the young woman as a “bitch”, stammers, paralyzed by stress: “I am ashamed to be here, I am seen as an anti-Semite or a racist, I apologize. of Mrs. Benayoum for having made remarks like that ”. More at ease, Rayanne M., at the head of a community of 4,000 subscribers on Twitter, pleaded “humor”, “trolling”, and the “thousandth degree” after calling for “vote against the Jewish ”. “It’s totally stupid […] being assimilated to an anti-Semite when that’s all I’m fighting, I’m ashamed that people have this image of me, ”he analyzes today.
After their interrogations, the young woman who was sentenced to 12 days of total incapacity for work after her coronation of First runner-up, insisted on testifying. “I felt extremely bad […] I accept the apologies on the other hand forgiving will be more difficult, it is something which marked me a lot and which spoiled an exceptional adventure ”, she confided. For his lawyer Fanny Attal, the damage linked to the indelibility of tweets is “impossible” to measure. “The tweets are there, they always will be and given the algorithms, they will never go away. […] April Benayoum will be associated with these hate messages ”. Responsible for carrying the requisitions, the magistrate of the public prosecutor’s office however tried to “find the just sentence” with regard to the facts and the personality of the defendants, all first-time offenders. Against the eight defendants, two months suspended prison sentence were requested. The court’s decision will be rendered on November 3 at 1:30 p.m.