Nine years after the events, the legal battle continues for a namesake of the infamous Mohamed Merah, author of the attacks which killed seven people in March 2012. According to information revealed by Capital
,
this man who had lodged a complaint against the M6 channel and Productions Tony Comiti for having disseminated his photo by mistake instead of that of the terrorist in a report devoted to the attacks has just been successful in the Court of Cassation.
Defamation
In October 2017, the Douai Tribunal de Grande Instance ruled that M6 and the production company had indeed committed a fault by infringing the image rights of Mohamed Merah. The defense then appealed against this decision which ordered them to pay € 10,000 in damages and € 3,000 in legal costs. To defend themselves, the company Métropole Télévision, editor of the M6 channel, and the production company had asked to reclassify the damage as defamation (which harms the honor and the consideration of an individual). Such a requalification then rendered Mohamed Merah's complaint invalid, because it should have been filed within three months of the facts. However, in June 2019, the Douai Court of Appeal had validated this defamatory ground, which is why Mohamed Merahis appealed in cassation this year.
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Last spring, the Court of Cassation of Paris however annulled the rendering of the Court of Appeal of Douai and condemns M6 and Productions Tony Comiti to pay to the namesake of the author of the attacks the sum of 3000 €.
In its decision of April 8, the Court invokes "
that defamation against one person can only affect another to the extent that the defamatory charges are personally intended for him (...) the publication of the name and face of a namesake of the defamed person is not enough to reflect this defamation
”.
A long and complex procedure
The starting point for this case is a Facebook photo. On April 1, 2012, two weeks after the attacks, the M6 channel broadcast in its 66-minute magazine “
The Mohamed Merah enigma
”, a perfectly identifiable Facebook photo of the namesake then confused with the terrorist. “
The image of my client has been around the world on the internet. It was picked up by all the world media as far as China. My client was forced to hide with his mother, this lasted several weeks,
”explains the former lawyer of the plaintiff Maître Bussy to the newspaper Capital.
In November 2013, the man sued for compensation the publisher of the M6 channel and the production company of the report.
According to the words of Mohamed Merah appearing in the judgment of June 13, 2019 of the Court of Appeal of Douai, the complainant then evoked "
damage to his reputation
" after the report.
According to this man, the dissemination of the photo directly "
destroyed his professional career
", not to mention the insult and threat messages received on Facebook after the report was broadcast.
Read alsoThe Calvary of the namesakes of Mohamed Merah
The recent decision of the court goes in the direction of this namesake of Mohamed Merah and opens a new chapter in what could be the last stage of the trial in this case. The Paris Court of Appeal will now have to rule in favor of the plaintiff represented by Maître Julie Gliksman, or of the M6 group and the production company.