Karim Benzema has sued Gilbert Collard’s former right-hand man Damien Rieu for defamation. The footballer criticizes the far-right activist for some of his tweets, which in particular equates him with terrorists.
The judges will have to decide. Karim Benzema has decided to sue Damien Rieu for defamation. The Real Madrid striker blames this support for Eric Zemmour for certain tweets written more than a year ago. On the first, Damien Rieu posts a photo of the player with Imam Nourdine Mamoune. “Interesting to discover that Karim Benzema frequents this imam who has just been searched,” he wrote, with all the innuendoes that this can garner.
In a second tweet from November 2020, the far-right activist posted 4 photos. We can see terrorists making a gesture similar to that of Karim Benzema. According to the player’s lawyer Sylvain Cormier, the pro-Zemmour activist “fuels hatred, likens Karim Benzema to a terrorist”.
For Damien Lefèvre, the activist’s real name, he spoke of a “classic procedure for intimidating”. He has already been sentenced by the courts for having entered the roof of a mosque in 2012, and for having participated in the anti-migrant operation in the Alps in 2018.
In a very different context, Karim Benzema has also already been sentenced by judges to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of €75,000 for complicity in attempted blackmail in the Mathieu Valbuena sextape affair.