former Quai d'Orsay guide Sophie Pommier prosecuted for advocating terrorism | EUROtoday
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QCalling the assaults of October 7, 2023 acts of “resistance” and evaluating Hamas to the French Resistance is that this an offense of glorifying terrorism? Yes, estimated the Paris prosecutor's workplace, which referred Sophie Pommier to the legal court docket to reply for this offense, punishable by seven years' imprisonment and a positive of 100,000 euros, the penalty being elevated as soon as the info had been been dedicated on the Internet.
The trial is scheduled to happen on February 13, 2025, earlier than the 30e legal chamber of the Paris judicial court docket.
On October 8, 2023, the day after the mass assaults perpetrated towards Israel (greater than 1,200 lifeless, 129 individuals – together with two youngsters and three French individuals – nonetheless held hostage to today), the defendant revealed the next message on her Instagram account , illustrated by a Palestinian flag fluttering within the wind: “Enough is enough! Decades of occupation and humiliation, injustice, provocation by settlers… The Western world, well established in its little comfort, is moved to see the Palestinians take up arms. But what other solution did we leave them with? The Resistance for us was magnificent, but when it comes to the Palestinians, is it terrorism? »
One month after the events, another controversial video
For mee Anthony Reisberg, lawyer for the French Jewish Youth association, at the origin of one of the complaints launched against Sophie Pommier, these comments are “not only inept but odious and extremely perverse”. There is little doubt, for this jurist, that they fall throughout the scope of article 421-2-5 of the Penal Code, which punishes “the fact of directly provoking acts of terrorism or of publicly apologizing of these acts.” The prosecution made the same analysis by initiating proceedings against this activist of the Palestinian cause, known for her excesses and her activism.
Presenting herself as a “political scientist” and “Middle East specialist”, Sophie Pommier was for a time a contractual “consultant” to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a member of the editorial board of the online journal Orient XXI. We owe him a book on Egypt (Egypt, behind the scenesLa Découverte), another on Islam told to children (Muhammad's Nocturnal JourneyGallimard Jeunesse) and some articles in The diplomatic world, on Egypt and Iraq. Her LinkedIn account, on which she claimed to be from “Sciences Po”, was deleted.
On November 7, 2023, one month after the facts and the distribution of the Instagram post which has now caused her to be prosecuted, Sophie Pommier created a buzz in a video published by the X account (ex-Twitter) @georjabitbol and viewed more than 1.6 million times. In these images, we saw her being snatched in the middle of Paris, with rage and shouting “Israel assassin!” », posters reproducing the portraits of Hamas hostages.
Administrative investigation at the Quai d'Orsay
The same day this sequence was broadcast, the Quai d'Orsay issued an embarrassed statement: “A former contractual worker of the ministry was recognized tearing down the portrait of Israeli hostages in Gaza, together with a number of French nationals […]. The video reveals a very unworthy angle, habits and feedback, which utterly disqualify this individual from having any working relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. […] We at the moment are conscious of different publications evaluating Hamas terrorist assaults to the French Resistance towards the Nazi occupation […]. Although this individual not has contractual relations with [le] ministry since final summer time, an administrative investigation might be carried out from right now on the circumstances of his recruitment. »
Persona non grata on the Quai d'Orsay and within the media, Sophie Pommier now dangers a heavy sentence.
How has the regulation advanced on the topic?
The regulation doesn’t exactly outline the act of “apology” of terrorism, however case regulation has been liable for clarifying its contours. The apology is “a speech which presents a crime in such a way that the reader is encouraged to make a favorable value judgment on it, erasing the moral disapproval which, by law, attaches to it”, was in a position to choose thus the Paris Criminal Court, by condemning General Paul Aussaresses in 2002. The latter had legitimized in his Memoirs using torture in Algeria.
Confirming the conviction for advocating terrorism of Dieudonné, who declared that he felt like “Charlie Coulibaly” after the assault on the newspaper Charlie Hebdothe Court of Cassation thought-about fifteen years later that the offense of apology was full when an individual demonstrates “equal consideration” for the victims and the perpetrators – of an assault within the case of the Dieudonné affair.
On April 18, the Lille legal court docket rendered a very reasoned judgment by sentencing the chief of the CGT du Nord, Jean-Paul Delescaut, to 1 yr of suspended imprisonment for a similar offense.
“Since 2014, the apology of terrorism is no longer a press offense, but a common law offense aimed precisely at fighting terrorism. It punishes people who would be tempted to pass a “favorable judgment” on such acts, their feedback having the ability to exert “an influence” on people tempted to commit, in flip, violent actions of the identical nature,” the judges thought-about. Lille.
“The debate of general interest on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must find its place in a democratic society […] opinion on the policy pursued by Israel is perfectly free,” they had been cautious to level out of their statements.
However, the incriminated remarks – “The horrors of the illegal occupation have received since Saturday the responses they provoked,” the CGT du Nord commented in a leaflet – don’t type a part of a “debate” or of “complex geopolitical reflections”. “This writing seems, in fact, to consider the terrorists as those occupied, and therefore as the real victims,” additional underlined the court docket, which noticed behind these “assertions” the chance of a “thought trap”.
Before concluding in these phrases: “The remarks focused […]in an unequivocal temporality, three days after the assaults of October 7, certainly represent the offense of glorifying terrorism in response to a number of goal and authorized standards: the demonization of a terrorist group, the justification of the act of terrorism inevitable, the motivation to make a worth judgment tending to reduce the ethical reprobation and inversion of the victims and perpetrators of the atrocities of October 7, 2023.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/comparaison-hamas-resistance-francaise-l-ex-consultante-du-quai-d-orsay-sophie-pommier-poursuivie-pour-apologie-du-terrorisme-23-05-2024-2561009_23.php