Asked Wednesday at the bar about images discovered on a USB key, displaying Hitler, Mussolini or even white supremacist slogans, Samuel Dufour, 27, said: "If you want to hear me say that I am a skinhead, a Nazi, a Facho, and whatever else you want to put behind, yes… but I didn't touch Clément Méric ”.
On the second day of the appeal trial for the death in 2013 of the young anti-fascist activist Clément Méric, the young man assumed his past as a skinhead but sought to decorrelate his opinions from the violence with which he is accused.
"You understand, you are not judged for your opinions", retorted Cosima Ouhioun, lawyer of the Méric family, adding that the court is interested in "how you express them vis-à-vis others", in the framework of the personality examination.
In 2018, the Paris Assize Court sentenced Samuel Dufour to seven years in prison for willful violence in assembly and with weapons, resulting in the death of Clément Méric, without intention of giving it.
Although he did not hit the victim during the fatal brawl in 2013, his participation had prevented the anti-fascists from rescuing Clément Méric, according to the court.
"I hit with your brass knuckle"
Samuel Dufour had appealed.
In this new trial before the Assizes of Essonne, which is to last until June 4, he and another accused face up to twenty years imprisonment.
The day before, the court was interested in the personality of the former skinhead Esteban Morillo, who had admitted at first instance, in 2018, to have dealt "two fatal blows" to the victim and had been sentenced to eleven years in prison.
To read also Death of Clément Méric: at the assizes, the former skinhead affirms himself repented
The story dates back to June 5, 2013. At the end of the afternoon, two small groups of young activists from the far left and the far right accidentally meet at a private sale in the Saint-Lazare district in Paris.
Forty minutes later, a fight breaks out in the street.
Clément Méric, an 18-year-old student from Sciences-Po Paris, collapsed on the asphalt after being hit in the face.
The police find messages on Samuel Dufour's phone.
"Hi, I hit with your brass knuckle," wrote the accused.
His interlocutor questions him: "Seriously, what have you done again?"
Samuel replies, "Ba, he and gone to the hospital."
5 against 3. We smash them.
MDR.
"
At the helm, Samuel Dufour, with an imposing build under his suit waistcoat, denied having used such a brass knuckle (a metal weapon pierced with holes through which you pass your fingers).
The investigator who conducted her personality test in 2013 shortly after the fact, she underlined a "change in behavior" in adolescence.
"I went crazy"
"Literally, I went crazy", explained Samuel Dufour: the apprentice baker "got tired" of being "treated as a fascist" as soon as he spoke in public about his opinions, such as his feeling of injustice. in front of a blocked social elevator for his parents "who work but cannot get by".
“I said to myself: you want to see a facho, you are going to see one!
And I went there thoroughly, ”said the young man.
Shaved head.
Bombers.
Bodybuilding.
Evenings at the Local, a popular bar of Serge Ayoub, at the head of the far-right movement the Third Way.
And Nazi tattoos.
To integrate this movement, "it is necessary to quickly make the tattoos, it is necessary to send images ... but today, I do not think any more like that", assured the young man.
"Was it a mistake?
», Asked the president of the court.
"Everyone makes mistakes", evaded the accused, who also said to be "sorry that there is a death in this story".
To the investigator who carried out his personality test in 2013, Samuel Dufour summed up as follows: "I'm a big jerk, who doesn't want to be fooled".
