Éric Zemmour was convicted on Thursday by the Paris Court of Appeal for racist insult, for having qualified in 2018 the first name of the former columnist of the Canal + group, Hapsatou Sy, as “an insult to France”.
In its judgment, the court confirmed the judgment rendered at first instance. The criminal court found the far-right polemicist guilty of “public insult because of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion” and imposed a fine of 4,000 euros on him.
Éric Zemmour was also ordered to pay 3,000 euros in damages and 2,000 euros in legal fees. On Thursday, the court of appeal also ordered the founder of the Reconquest party to pay an additional 3,000 euros to Hapsatou Sy for procedural costs.
Comments made in 2018
The incriminated comments were made in 2018 during the recording of the show “Terrans du Dimanche”, broadcast on C8. “It’s your first name that is an insult to France. France is not a virgin land, it is a land with a history, with a past. Your first name is not in history, you are in the depths of France,” Eric Zemmour told Hapsatou Sy.
He added that the mother of the ex-columnist should have taken a “first name from the calendar” and called her “Corinne for example”.
VIDEO. “Sunday Earthlings”: Hapsatou Sy reveals the sequence of the clash with
Éric Zemmour
During the hearing before the Court of Appeal on February 29, the Advocate General considered that, the first name being an “essential attribute” of identity, “attacking the first name of Hapsatou Sy because of its supposed foreign origin is a disrespect or even contempt for France.”
Hapsatou Sy hails “a great victory”
The ex-columnist detailed the consequences of these comments on her personal life. “I receive 3,000 to 4,000 hate messages per day, excrement of messages, I am the subject of online harassment, I am targeted by death threats, calls for my rape and stoning,” he said. she declared.
This Thursday, she welcomed a judgment which is “a great victory which goes beyond (her)” and the “end of a long ordeal which cost me my career and my health”.
Éric Zemmour, for his part, made it known that he intended to appeal to the Court of Cassation. In a press release, he denounced “these politicized judges (who) want to condemn (him) to intimidate the French”. “The political judges got Fillon, they won’t get me,” he concluded.