Seventeen people were arrested on suspicion of having cyberharassed the singer Eddy de Pretto, targeted by a wave of homophobic insults and death threats on social networks.
Facts that occurred after a concert he gave in the Saint-Eustache church in Paris in June 2021, we learned Thursday from a source familiar with the matter.
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The suspects - mostly men - were arrested all over France between Tuesday and Thursday, said this source, confirming information from Le
Parisien
.
Aged between 20 and 30, they were mostly unknown to the courts.
Some are conservative Catholics, according to the source.
The arrests were carried out by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes (OCLCH), also responsible for the fight against hate crimes, in conjunction with services local police and gendarmerie.
3000 messages of insults and death threats
Invited to perform on June 17, 2021 as part of the Qui va piano va sano festival, Eddy de Pretto had performed his piece
À quoi bon
, which evokes the difficulties of reconciling his homosexuality and religion.
After his performance, the singer received nearly 3,000 messages of insults and death threats on social media, according to
Le Parisien
.
“Do you want to sing sodom in a church?
No worries, wear your balls and do the same in a mosque”
, had notably written internet users according to screenshots posted on the singer's Instagram account.
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The latter had filed a complaint and an investigation had been opened by the National Pole for the Fight against Online Hate (PLNH) of the Paris prosecutor's office.
