The authors of the anti-Semitic tweets against April Benayoum, Miss Provence 2020, were sentenced to fines and a citizenship course.
Justice has been rendered to him. On the evening of the Miss France 2021 election, on December 19, April Benayoum, Miss Provence, became the target of anti-Semitic insults. It all started with a sentence uttered by the 21-year-old young woman in her speech where she explained that her pronounced taste for geography surely came from her family origins: “I myself have quite varied origins: my mother is Serbo-Croatian, and my father Israeli-Italian”. It did not take more for a wave of hateful waves to seize Twitter and target the contender for the title of Miss France 2021. Internet users and associations then report the tweets in question to Twitter as well as to the public prosecutor from Paris. Of all the messages, eight of them and their authors were prosecuted.
This Wednesday, November 3, the Paris Criminal Court delivered its verdict. And the least we can say is that the sanction is more educational than financial. As a reminder, the authors of the messages aged 20 to 58, from several departments in France, faced suspended prison sentences and fines for “Public insults committed on the grounds of origin, ethnicity, race or religion”. Seven people were therefore ordered to pay fines of 300 to 800 euros. The eighth person was acquitted, the court ruling that his tweet did not target “neither directly nor indirectly April Benayoum”, but rather followed the “discussion thread in which (he) subscribed” on Twitter. The seven convicted must also pay 1 euro in damages to the young woman, as well as to associations constituted as civil parties: SOS Racisme, the League of Human Rights or the International League against Racism and anti-Semitism, the Union of Jewish Students of France and the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples.
Legal proceedings against Twitter
But that’s not all. Four of the condemned must follow “A citizenship course” two days. A decision explained by the “difficulty” from some to “Understand the scope” of their words. “The important thing is the didactic side, exemplary of this decision, which shows that we can no longer hide on the internet, on Twitter”, welcomed the lawyer of Mrap, Me Jean-Louis Lagarde. A decision also welcomed by April Benayoum’s lawyer, Jean Veil, who informed AFP that proceedings were initiated against Twitter, considered to be “Responsible for this case” by his “let it go”. Case to follow to find out what the court will decide against the American social network.