The right-wing polemicist Éric Zemmour was sentenced Thursday to a fine of 4,000 euros for racist insults, for having qualified in 2018 the first name of the former columnist of the Canal + group Hapsatou Sy as an “insult to the France”. The 64-year-old former presidential candidate and president of Reconquête!, absent during the judgment, was also ordered to pay 3,000 euros in damages and 2,000 euros in legal fees.
His lawyer Me Olivier Pardo immediately announced that he was appealing “against this decision which has no legal meaning”.
“A great satisfaction” for Hapsatou Sy’s lawyer
“It’s a great satisfaction”, on the contrary estimated Me Antoine Vey, Hapsatou Sy’s lawyer, “the court gave us entirely right. “Behind the fight that Hapsatou Sy carries, there is probably the recognition of a whole section of the French population”, he added. During the hearing, on November 4, the prosecutor had requested a 100-day fine of 200 euros, or 20,000 euros, which could turn into imprisonment in the event of non-payment. .
The remarks in question had been made during the public recording of Thierry Ardisson’s program Sunday Earthlings in September 2018 on C8. The production company had cut the excerpt during editing. The columnist had broadcast on social networks a video filmed by a make-up artist containing this cut passage and filed a complaint with a civil action.
Éric Zemmour preferred the first name “Corinne”
The sequence as broadcast on C8 goes like this: Hapsatou Sy reminds Eric Zemmour of his first name, who retorts: “Your mother was wrong”. “And what would you like my name to be?”, rebounds the columnist. “Corinne”, replies the guest. In a following face-to-face, cut during the editing, the columnist declares: “What you have just said is an insult to France”. “Mademoiselle, it’s your first name which is an insult to France”, affirms in return Eric Zemmour.
The court stressed that the remarks were “outrageous” towards Ms. Sy “since they mean that her first name, part of her personality (…) would be the expression of a mark of disrespect, of contempt towards the France and would undermine his dignity”. “Even if they have a link with the initial debate (…) are clearly detached from the latter from the moment they degenerate into a strictly personal attack, of a discriminatory nature”, according to the court.
Éric Zemmour had been definitively sentenced to a fine of 3,000 euros for provoking religious hatred in 2016. He is the target of numerous procedures. In 2023, he must be warned in eight trials in Paris after complaints against comments he made.