"
Racism is a poison which inoculates and consumes slowly,
" said Friday, October 29 the prosecutor who requested three months in prison against the former president of a Marseille nautical club who uttered racist insults during a meeting with elected officials.
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"
In France, we do not have the right to make racist remarks
", recalled the prosecutor Nicolas Ruby also claiming against Christian Tommasini 3000 euros fine. On February 22, during a meeting of a port council, under the aegis of the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, Christian Tommasini, then president of the Pointe-Rouge nautical club, had said that he would be "
the first to go ratonnade
”.
According to the revelations of the local investigation site
Marsactu
, which had relied on a recording of the meeting brought to the investigation, the sixty-year-old had also attacked in very virulent and derogatory terms to people he called of "
Arabs
" that "
must be eradicated
", asking the secretary on the spot to take note of her words.
“
My words went beyond my thought, I amalgamated everything, I said anything.
I overstepped the line a bit
, ”defended the sixty-year-old who has since left office at the club.
"I am absolutely not racist"
"
I regret these comments very much, I am absolutely not racist, I have friends from an immigrant background, I went to school with them,
" he continued, awkwardly explaining that his comments were intended to "
draw the attention of the Metropolis
" to incivilities around the nautical club. "
What shocks me is that no one intervenes to condemn these remarks
", noted Me Serge Tavitian, the lawyer for the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, civil party.
The defendant confirmed. "
In the end nobody reprimanded me. (...) If they had arrested me, I would have stopped,
" he said of this meeting attended by vice-president LR of the Metropolis and an elected representative of the Printemps Marseillais, the majority of the left at the head of Marseilles. "
By speaking of Arabs in the plural, you deny their singularity, their humanity,
" added Me Amine Abdelmadjid, lawyer for the Human Rights League. "
If these words fall on malicious ears, we comfort these people and we encourage them to go to the end,
" reminded him with emotion a witness cited by the civil parties Khaled Sid, victim of a racist attack for which his attacker was sentenced in February in Besançon.
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If these remarks are "
unacceptable
", they were not held in a meeting open to the general public, pleaded the lawyer of the defendant, Me Jean Boudot, asking for the nullity of the procedure.
The judgment will be rendered on December 17th.