The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considered valid Thursday the conviction by France of a man who had offered his three-year-old nephew a T-shirt bearing the words "I am a bomb", and " jihad, born September 11 ”, in 2012 in Sorgues (Vaucluse).
The little boy had gone to nursery school with the T-shirt on September 25, 2012. The director of the establishment had made a report to the academic inspectorate and to the mayor of the town, who had seized the public prosecutor .
The boy's mother and his uncle who had offered him the garment had been released at first instance by the Avignon Criminal Court, but the Nîmes Court of Appeal had sentenced them to one month suspended prison sentence and 2,000 euros in fine for the mother, and two months suspended sentence and 4,000 euros fine for the uncle.
Only the uncle had turned to the ECHR.
"Before the national authorities and before the European Court, the applicant argued of the humorous nature of the disputed inscriptions", notes the court based in Strasbourg.
"The right to humor does not allow everything"
But the latter recalls that if "humorous speech or forms of expression which cultivate humor are protected by Article 10 of the European Convention" on Human Rights (which protects freedom of expression), they do not escape the limits defined by the article. "Indeed, the right to humor does not allow everything and anyone who avails himself of freedom of expression assumes
duties and responsibilities
." The judicial arm of the Council of Europe also notes that if 11 years had elapsed between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the events, they "took place only a few months after other terrorist attacks, having notably caused the death of three children in a school ”, the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah in Toulouse, after the attack of Mohamed Merah.
The fact that the applicant has no link with any terrorist movement "could not reduce the scope of the disputed message", further underlines the ECHR, which regrets "the instrumentalization of a three-year-old child, unwitting bearer of the disputed message ". The European court thus considers that "the reasons used by the domestic courts to pronounce the applicant's conviction, based on the fight against the apology for mass violence, appear both
relevant
and
sufficient
to justify the disputed interference". There has therefore been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention.