Three victims of terrorism, targets of online harassment, sue Twitter.
The social network is held responsible, according to the complainants, for the dismissal of their complaints, because it did not respond to legal requests to identify their harassers.
Aurélia Gilbert, survivor of the Bataclan attack, Georges Salines, the father of a victim, and the former journalist Nicolas Hénin, taken hostage in 2013 by the Islamic State group blame the social network for "refusing to comply with a request of a judicial authority ”but also of“ complicity in offenses of public insult.
"
In August 2020 for the first two and during the summer of 2019 for Nicolas Hénin, they were targeted by a wave of harassment and insults after taking a stand in favor of the repatriation of the children of French jihadists detained in Syria.
According to his lawyers Maître Eric Morain and Antoine Vey, Nicolas Hénin found himself "at the center of a veritable surge of violence and hatred on the net, mixing insults, threats to his person and his relatives, conspiracy theories going as far as" to question his past as a hostage.
"
Deleted messages
Most of the reported messages were quickly deleted by the social network.
But for lack of response from Twitter to his requests, the Paris prosecutor successively classified their complaints during the year 2020, because of "unknown authors".
In the case of Georges Salines, the Twitter Support service told investigators that "he only responded to requisitions as part of a request for a letter of request or international criminal assistance," reports the summons.
“Twitter specified that even assuming that a requisition is made in these forms, it would then apply its own rules of procedure, by first informing the user concerned to give him the opportunity to challenge it in court.
It is only in the absence of user recourse or failure that Twitter can "reasonably" respond ", according to the complainants.
This is not the first time that Twitter has been targeted.
Another procedure, launched in Paris in 2020, four associations (The Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), SOS Racisme, SOS Homophobie and J'accuse) accuse Twitter of failing to meet its obligations of moderation.
Mediation, ordered by the Paris court, is still ongoing.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
In December, a man who threatened Hugo Clément, the journalist of France Télévisions on Twitter was sentenced to a € 300 fine and € 600 in damages by the court of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) according to the procedure of to plead guilty.
