The former spokesperson for the dissolved ultra-right movement Generation Identity, Thaïs d'Escufon, was sentenced Thursday in Saint-Gaudens (Haute-Garonne) to two months in prison suspended "for public insults", after the publication of 'an anti-migrant video, we learned from a judicial source.
Read also Identity generation, at the heart of the uninhibited ultra-right
Another activist of this movement, Jérémie Piano, who also published videos hostile to migrants, was sentenced to the same sentence for "inciting racial hatred".
Identity generation dissolved
Each of them was also fined 3,000 euros.
The hearing was held on June 16 in the absence of the defendants.
The public prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy, had requested a four-month suspended prison sentence and demanded a 4,000 euros fine for each.
"It is a very special procedure, the question relates to freedom of political expression," he stressed.
The magistrate had also explained why he had retained different offenses against the two activists.
They had both posted videos on Youtube, after an anti-migrant operation on January 19 at the Col du Portillon, on the border between France and Spain.
During this operation, around thirty activists at the wheel of vehicles screen-printed "Defend Europe" had deployed a banner "No way".
A team then left with a drone to "monitor the border", they said.
According to the prosecutor, the spokesperson for the movement, Anne-Thaïs du Tertre d'Escoeuffant, known as Thaïs d'Escufon, a 21-year-old student from Toulouse, had “stigmatized” the migrants in a Youtube video published on January 21, saying that 'it was "scandalous that a migrant could cross the border".
Comments which characterize "this border crossing as a danger, it is a speculation on the concept of danger whereas nothing is argued".
Regarding Jérémie Piano, the prosecutor denounced "a call for revolt" and "the construction of a stigmatizing speech".
In another Youtube video of the operation posted on January 20, he mentioned "a migratory invasion", "thousands of illegal immigrants already in France" including "probably thieves, rapists and potential terrorists".
Generation Identity was dissolved in early March.
The Council of State confirmed this decision, considering that it was "proportionate to the seriousness of the risks to public order".
