The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed Thursday the conviction of polemicist Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala to a fine of 9,000 euros, which can turn into imprisonment in the event of non-payment, for complicity in an anti-Semitic insult after the publication of a video and a song entitled “C'est mon choaaa”.
This song, published in June 2017 on Youtube, Deezer, Spotify and Apple Music, features the following lyrics: “My head is hot in front of the barbecue.
If the merguez is kosher, I may have a noose around my neck ”.
In November 2019, the court sentenced the polemicist to a fine of 9,000 euros while the prosecution had requested ten months' imprisonment.
The court then ruled that the words of his song referred "unquestionably, by innuendo, to the drama of the Shoah which is derided" and the "right to humor" invoked by polemicist "collides with another right, that of human dignity ”.
Banned from online platforms
Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, now 55, had denied being the singer and author of this song, which he said was written by an inmate during a “schoolboy song workshop” in prison.
Last summer, the polemicist was permanently banned from major online platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, in the name of the fight against hate content.
During his appeal trial, the prosecution requested eight months' imprisonment.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal also requires him to pay several thousand euros in damages or legal costs to seven anti-racist associations as civil parties.
The artist "financially stricken", according to his lawyer
"Dieudonné is like all artists, financially stricken, with the period and the absence of shows", reacted to AFP his lawyer, Me Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, questioned on the financial capacity of his client to pay of his fines.
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The controversial comedian, with a criminal record filled for a decade by his anti-Semitic outings, was also sentenced in July 2019 to three years' imprisonment, including two farms, and a fine of 200,000 euros for tax fraud, money laundering, abuse of corporate assets or fraudulent organization of its insolvency.
