The initial victory of Paris Saint-Germain, this season in the Champions League, was marked by incidents in the visitor park of the Parc des Princes, on September 6 against Juventus (2-1). Two Italian supporters have just been sentenced this Tuesday in Paris, one for having made a Nazi salute, the other for having imitated a monkey, in the Parisian enclosure on the occasion of this European shock. After the broadcast on social networks of videos concerning the part of the stadium reserved for Juve supporters, four men were arrested after this Champions League match. For two of them, the procedure had been closed without further action, but two others had been sent back to the criminal court of the capital.
This Tuesday, the court sentenced one of them, a restaurateur, to a fine of 4,000 euros and a two-year stadium ban for having made a Nazi salute in the direction of Parisian supporters. The defendant was dismissed for apologizing for crimes against humanity, but the court reclassified the facts, choosing the offense of displaying, in a sports arena, symbols inciting hatred or racial discrimination.
The second defendant mimicked the attitude of a gorilla
“By reproducing such a gesture, while addressing an audience which he considered at that moment to be his adversary, his ‘enemy’, the defendant exhibited, during the course of a public sporting event, a symbol of hatred which refers to the idea of mass extermination of people, directly linked to their origin, “said the court in its decision. Another Italian supporter, aged 19 at the time of the match, was sentenced for racist insult to a suspended fine of 1,500 euros, after having mimicked the attitude of a gorilla, in particular towards a black supporter. of PSG.
For the court, “because of the very racist nature of these acts, they cannot find any excuse in the attitude of the opposing supporters, whom one can imagine, in view of the disputed video, that they were uttering insults or carrying out provocative gestures.
SOS Racisme and the Licra civil parties
During the trial on November 23, the second defendant regretted these actions, while the restaurateur was absent. The two men were also ordered to pay a symbolic 1 euro in damages and 800 euros in legal fees to two civil party associations, SOS Racisme and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra).
In October, the UEFA Disciplinary Committee fined Paris SG 62,250 euros, mainly for using smoke bombs during this match (2-1 for PSG). The disciplinary procedure opened on the Juventus side, for suspicion of “discriminatory behavior”, continued.