A 20-year-old young man, presented as an
“influencer”
on TikTok, was sentenced Monday to twelve months in prison with suspended probation for inciting riots in Brest last June.
The probationary suspension was accompanied by the obligation to carry out 240 hours of community service.
“Calling all brothers. Tonight, we all get together. We’re going to do dirty things to all these sons of bitches
,” said the defendant, hooded and wearing sunglasses, in videos posted on Snapchat and Telegram, on June 29, 2023. Urban violence had then erupted since the watches in Brest, as in the rest of the country, after the death in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) of Nahel, 17, killed by a police officer during a road check.
The defendant, of Central African nationality, then administered a Telegram loop entitled
“Brest Riots”
and was suspected by the police of
“coordinating the Brest rioters”
.
“The videos, I made them because I was asked to do them
,” defends this tall, thin young man at the bar, who defines himself as a
“content creator”
(
“We don’t say influencer anymore”
, he explains to the president of the court).
On his TikTok account, created during confinement, he publishes football videos and has nearly 53,000 subscribers.
An activity which brings him around 200 euros per month.
“The mortars were an incantation for justice to be heard”
It was this
“notoriety”
that led him to offer his services during urban violence.
The goal?
“Let there be mortar clashes with the police”
but
“without looting”
, he explains in police custody.
However, he will be recognized, on video surveillance images, entering a robbed supermarket, one night of violence.
“The mortars were an incantation to justice to make itself heard,”
he explains at the bar, referring to
“young people from the neighborhoods”
killed by
“police blunders
. ”
“You spit on the police, on the Republic,”
the prosecutor tells him, demanding two years in prison.
“He is not a delinquent, he is someone calm who was carried away or even manipulated
,” retorts his lawyer Me Florent Bouvier.
With a clean criminal record, the young man fled his country in the middle of the civil war at the age of nine.
In June, he was waiting for a residence permit to be able to work.
“With a legal conviction, it’s going to be complicated
,” the president pointed out to him, accusing him of
“spitting in the soup
. ”