The activist Cédric Herrou, who had vilified the call of the deputy LR Eric Ciotti to send back to Libya the rescue boats to migrants like the Aquarius and was prosecuted for insult and defamation, was released Wednesday by the judicial court of Grasse, according to his lawyers.
Goldnadel: "Cédric Herrou's release reveals the dangers of a government of judges"
In June 2018, after the closure of Italian ports by the populist government and its Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, the Aquarius, a humanitarian ship with 630 migrants on board, had become the subject of an intense diplomatic crisis in Europe , before landing in Spain.
On CNews, the boss of Republicans in the Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti, had then expressed his understanding for the Italian position and pleaded for the firmness to reduce migratory flows, judging that the Aquarius should return to the Libyan coasts, but not land in Europe.
"The biggest French pork "
" I found the biggest French pig to welcome all the miserability of the world !! @ECiotti world champion !!! ", Cédric Herrou reacted on Twitter. The next day, he posted another message: " When @ECiotti said in 2018 '' let's put the migrants in Libya '' he would say in 1940 let's put them in the gas chambers '.
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At the hearing in mid-June, the public prosecutor's office requested a conviction, without ruling on the sentence, while Eric Ciotti's lawyer, Me Gérard Baudoux, demanded 20,000 euros in non-pecuniary damage and 5,000 euros in repeatable costs. The militant farmer of the Roya valley had for his part recognized that his remarks were a bit daring but stressed that he had no intention of cursing but only to draw attention to the position of Eric Ciotti, untenable humanly according to him, taking into account the atrocities in Libya.
His lawyers Messrs Zia Oloumi and Sabrina Goldman had argued that Cédric Herrou had " a whistleblower function, a kind of freedom watchdog and could therefore benefit from freedom of information comparable to that of journalists "
Since 2015 and the influx of migrants from Italy, Cédric Herrou has multiplied criticism against the prefecture and the department of Alpes-Maritimes, of which Eric Ciotti is the former president, denouncing in particular the expeditious dismissal of minors and their problematic management.