Five people will be tried in April in Paris for fighting online against former journalist Nicolas Hénin, a source familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
These online attacks followed the report by the ex-hostage of the Twitter account of the father of a Bataclan victim who called for the jihadists to be shot on their return to France.
These five people, three men and two women, are summoned on April 20 to respond to threats and harassment, according to this source, which confirms information from the Journal du Dimanche (JDD).
Nicolas Hénin, who was the hostage of the Islamic State organization for ten months in Syria in 2013-2014, filed a complaint in early 2019 against X for threats, death threats and online moral harassment.
"I call for you to have your throats cut", "it is he who deserves the execution", "we should have let you die at Daesh", affirmed some of the thousands of messages targeting the journalist, now specialized in the advice on the fight against terrorism and Islamist radicalization.
These threats had appeared when Mr. Hénin had called to report to Twitter and to the Pharos platform (in charge of the fight against illegal content on the internet) tweets published by the father of a victim of the November 13 attacks, Patrick. Jardin, about the planned return at the time of several dozen French jihadists detained by the Kurds.
"The important thing is the message"
"Let us shoot them (...) as Leclerc had the French of the Waffen SS shot", "let us also kill their children elsewhere", had published Mr. Jardin on the social network, which had ended up blocking his account.
On a new account, the latter had then treated Mr. Hénin as a “little journalist who left the clue” and obtained the support of several figures from the National Rally.
In the absence of a response from Twitter to his requests, the Paris prosecutor's office had closed his complaint in 2020. But the journalist's lawyer, Me Eric Morain, had appealed to relaunch the investigation.
Twitter then accessed the requisitions and identified around thirty accounts, on which five were selected by the national anti-hate online pole, set up in January 2021.
"We can say that there are not enough, we can regret that the prosecution has not retained more accounts," responded to AFP Me Morain.
“But the important thing is the message.
Each new case is another building block against online hatred, ”he added.
In addition, Patrick Jardin, civil party in the trial of the November 13 attacks, will testify on Tuesday.
