Six men and women, aged 19 to 39, including the lawsuit for "harassment" and "death threat" on Twitter against Mila - a young woman who has been the target of stalkers since her publication of a controversial video on the Islam - was opened on April 11 at the Paris Criminal Court, will be fixed on their fate this Tuesday, the day of the deliberation.
Read alsoMila: new trial and torrent of online hate
On April 12, the representative of the national pole for the fight against online hatred had requested up to six months firm against the defendants, among whom are four women.
The prosecutor had, in detail, requested six-month suspended prison sentences against the only three defendants who had appeared at the hearing, eight months suspended prison sentences against two absent defendants and six months firm against the only one, also absent, who had a long criminal record.
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After two days of hearing, the representative of the public prosecutor had deplored in her submissions the "
inability
" of the respondents "
to present a real apology and to question themselves
".
On the bench of the defendants, only Sorenza D., 19, had directly asked Mila for forgiveness.
"
If one day I meet this girl, I'll kill her with my own hands
", had posted this frail young woman, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, on her Twitter account in November 2020. "
At the time, I only expressed myself this way because that's how I was brought
up, ”she then justified, referring to a violent father.
A scapegoat"
Mila is "
a scapegoat for all the values that we adults have stopped transmitting, he is the scapegoat for our cowardice
", had for his part argued Mila's lawyer, Richard Malka, who had put in guard against the "
trivialization
" of cruelty on the internet and the risk of accepting "
this language
" as being "
that of young people
".
Like other defendants, Tristan J., a 19-year-old student, said during the hearing that he did not think his tweet could reach Mila.
"
For me, only my friends watch my tweets
."
He had replied to a classmate that he had to "
smoke
it ", for, he said,
Read alsoOnline harassment: young people more and more exposed
“
Words have a meaning
”, had immediately rebuked Me Malka.
"
For you, these tweets were nonsense, for her, it's torture
".
Mila, 18, lives under police protection.
The young woman was the target of a "
tidal wave of hatred
" after responding in January 2020, when she was 16 and a half years old, to insults on social networks about her sexual orientation by through a vehement video about Islam.
The young woman, who claims her right to blasphemy, had attracted a new round of threats after the publication of a second controversial video, on November 14, 2020, in which she sharply launched to her detractors: "
and last thing, watch your buddy Allah, please.
Because my fingers in her asshole, I still haven't taken them out
”.
According to her lawyer, Mila has received more than 100,000 hate messages and death threats since her January 2020 video.
“
I never want to make the victims feel guilty again”
The Mila affair, which has become symbolic of the fight for freedom of expression and the right to blasphemy, has taken on very significant media coverage in a country marked by deadly Islamist attacks in 2015 against the satirical weekly
Charlie Hebdo
, which had published caricatures of Muhammad or against the teacher Samuel Paty beheaded in 2020 after showing these same caricatures to students.
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Last July, the Paris Criminal Court had already sentenced ten people to suspended sentences of four to six months in prison for “online harassment” and the eleventh, an 18-year-old young woman, for “death threats”.
"What I want is that, all together (...) we continue to fight"
, had commented the young woman leaving the court, accompanied by her parents, her lawyer and the agents responsible for her protection.
“What I want is for the people who would be considered plague victims, who would be banned from social networks, to be those who harass, who threaten death, who incite suicide.
I never want to make the victims feel guilty again
,” she insisted.
The offense of cyberbullying was created by a law of 2018. It can be constituted when several people attacking the same victim know that their words or behavior characterize a repetition, without each of these people having acted repeatedly or concertedly.
The defendants face two years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros for online harassment, three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros for death threats.
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