After two releases, a new trial: the Court of Cassation ordered on Tuesday that Eric Zemmour be retried for contesting a crime against humanity, for having argued in 2019 that Marshal Pétain had “saved” French Jews during the Second World War world.
Eric Zemmour, 65, had been cited in court by associations after remarks made on October 21, 2019, during a debate on the program “Face à l’info” of which he was the star columnist on CNews, with Bernard-Henri Levy.
“One day (…) you dared to say that Pétain had saved the Jews,” BHL said. “French, specify, specify, French”, had interrupted Eric Zemmour. “Or had saved the French Jews. It is a monstrosity, it is revisionism”, continued Mr. Lévy. “It’s reality once again, I’m sorry,” Mr. Zemmour replied.
On February 4, 2021, the Paris court acquitted him, a decision confirmed on appeal on May 12, 2022, after the second round of the presidential election in which the far-right candidate obtained 7.07% of the vote.
The Court of Appeal had considered that, if the remarks “may offend the families of deportees”, they “are not intended to contest or minimize, even marginally, the number of victims of the deportation or the policy of extermination in the concentration camps”.
She recalled that Philippe Pétain, head of government of the Vichy regime, had not been convicted “for one or more crimes against humanity” during his trial at the Liberation, but for “attack against the internal security of the ‘State’ and ‘intelligences with the enemy’.
Five civil party associations and the general prosecutor’s office had lodged appeals and, on Tuesday, the highest court of the judiciary overturned the decision and ordered a new trial.
The Court ruled that “the remarks complained of may constitute an offence, even if they relate to a personality who has not been convicted of a crime against humanity”, according to a press release.
For her, “by affirming it is once again the real”, Eric Zemmour “has taken up the remarks” mentioned by BHL and, if the latter “echoed more measured writings previously published (…) in one of his books, the Court of Appeal should have made a better demonstration of it”.
“The UEJF is satisfied with what constitutes a victory against the countless hateful and negationist remarks uttered by Eric Zemmour for years now”, reacted to AFP Samuel Lejoyeux, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, civil party.
“But beyond that”, this decision “comes to reaffirm an essential thing: the rehabilitation of Pétain and the minimization of the responsibility of France in the Holocaust, it is Holocaust denial”, he added.
“It’s a real victory for law and memory,” welcomed AFP Me Patrice Spinosi, lawyer for the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (Mrap).
“The Court of Cassation says above all that the Court of Appeal explained itself poorly, so we hope that the next Court of Appeal will better motivate its decision which, it seems to me, will have to go in the same direction, since we have had two favorable decisions,” Eric Zemmour’s lawyer, Me Olivier Pardo, told AFP.
Eric Zemmour’s remarks earned him a series of legal proceedings, in particular for racial insult, incitement to hatred or contestation of crimes against humanity.
He was definitively sentenced twice for incitement to hatred, for remarks made in 2010 and 2016.
No less than eight trials await him by the end of 2023, including that on appeal concerning unaccompanied migrant minors, described as “thieves”, “murderers”, “rapists” on the CNews channel in 2020 – at first instance, on January 17, 2022, he was sentenced to a fine of 10,000 euros for incitement to hatred.
He must also be tried in particular for statements concerning the L214 association, the journalist Taha Bouhafs, the city of Trappes, the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) as well as the deputy Danièle Obono.
09/05/2023 19:30:17 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP