The senator from the Reconquest! Stéphane Ravier was sentenced on Friday to a fine of 3,000 euros by the Marseille criminal court for defamation against the sea rescue NGO SOS Méditerranée. The facts date back to 2018 when Mr. Ravier, then still a member of the National Rally, accused the NGO providing assistance to migrants in distress at sea and whose headquarters is in Marseille “of being complicit in human trafficking”.
“This decision marks the red line that must not be crossed”
In addition to a fine of 3,000 euros, the senator, who has since joined Eric Zemmour’s party, was ordered to pay the symbolic sum of one euro to SOS Méditerranée for moral damage and 3,000 euros for procedural costs. “This decision marks the red line that must not be crossed between the debate of ideas and the defamatory attack which falls under criminal law”, explained to AFP François de Cambiaire, lawyer for SOS Méditerranée who said “ very satisfied”.
Stéphane Ravier, present during the deliberations, reacted by saying that “politically, I will not be silenced. We will try through legal channels but I will not let it happen.” He said he would appeal this decision. “The freedom of expression of a parliamentarian is a condition of democratic debate. We consider that this decision is not legally founded and will naturally request a new examination of the case before the Court of Appeal,” added his lawyer Julien Pinelli.
“No sufficient factual basis to justify his remarks”
The court, however, in a seven-page document, justified its decision by considering that if “the defendant, as a politician, expressed himself on a subject of general interest, he proceeded by way of affirmation and without caution in attributing the commission of a criminal offense to SOS Méditerranée”. “However, he did not have any sufficient factual basis to justify his comments, thus exceeding the limits of freedom of expression, even in the context of a political controversy,” he added.
On October 7, 2018, the senator questioned SOS Méditerranée on Twitter (now X), also congratulating the far-right Génération Identitaire movement, dissolved in 2021, for its violent action in front of the NGO’s headquarters in Marseille. Two days earlier, 22 activists from Génération Identitaire had entered the headquarters of SOS Méditerranée deploying a critical banner. The NGO’s staff had “been brutalized, some (employees) tackled” then “forcibly ejected from their office”, said the general director Sophie Beau.
Denouncing a “unique scene of violence”, the court sentenced two of the Génération Identitaire activists on October 20, 2022 to prison terms of up to one year for this action.
Stéphane Ravier already convicted of public insult
Stéphane Ravier had already been sentenced last December to a fine of 10,000 euros by the Lyon criminal court for public insult after having published an insulting message in January against a Lyon lawyer.
He must also be tried on April 17 for illegal taking of interest by the Marseille criminal court for the hiring of his son Thomas in 2015 in the green spaces department of the town hall of the 7th sector (13th and 14th arrondissements) of which he was mayor. between 2014 and 2017.