Two acquittals and five suspended sentences were handed down on Wednesday in Valence against seven men accused of having participated in a hooded ultra-right parade at the end of November in Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme), after the fatally fatal death of Thomas, a high school student. injured at the end of a village ball.
Two of the seven defendants were acquitted by the Valence criminal court, the others received five months of suspended prison time, the lawyer of one of the acquitted, Me Mathieu Sassi, told AFP.
The seven men aged 19 to 24 were notably judged for “participation in a group formed with a view to preparing violence”.
The Valencia court was more lenient than the requisitions made at the beginning of February by the prosecution - up to ten months in prison.
At the time, the court acquitted two other defendants, aged 20 and 33, with a fine of 300 euros for one for “carrying a bladed weapon”.
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During the hearing, they all claimed to have come to Romans to “pay homage to Thomas”, a 16-year-old teenager fatally injured by a stab wound in Crépol on the night of November 17 to 18, 2023. The defendants had been arrested on the evening of Saturday, November 25, when around a hundred ultra-right activists from all over France had gathered in Romans, ready to do battle with the young people of the Monnaie district.
Other arrests during this parade
Two small ultra-right groups, the Martel Division and the Citadelle, were dissolved in the wake of the Romans-sur-Isère rallies.
Six demonstrators aged 18 to 25 were sentenced in immediate appearance to sentences of six to 10 months in prison after the nighttime parade which degenerated into clashes with the police.
All were released at the beginning of January pending their appeal trial.
At the same time, nine young people from Romans-sur-Isère were indicted and six imprisoned for their alleged role in the death of young Thomas.
Due to a lack of material evidence, and due to the suspects' contradictory statements, investigators are struggling to know which of them carried out the fatal stabbing, according to one of the lawyers contacted by AFP.