The Lille criminal court sentenced, this Thursday, the secretary general of the CGT departmental Union of the North, Jean-Paul Delescaut, to one year's imprisonment with a simple suspended sentence for "apology of terrorism". A conviction which he appealed. On the other hand, he was acquitted of acts of public incitement to hatred or violence.
The trade unionist was prosecuted for a leaflet distributed by the union on October 10, three days after the Hamas attack on Israel.
“The horrors of the illegal occupation have piled up. Since Saturday (
October 7
) they have received the responses they provoked,” we could read in particular. This tract, written collectively, was published under the responsibility of Jean-Paul Delescaut.
The court considered that the comments in question demonized the perpetrators of the attacks, incited to “reduce moral reprobation” against them and created an inversion between victims and perpetrators of terrorist acts. The court also emphasized that the leaflet contained “no explicit or implicit condemnation of the actions of October 7.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Sophie Binet in support
While believing that it did not contain any "real exhortation to hatred or violence", he pointed out that these remarks could have "concrete consequences" in France, where the majority of anti-Semitic acts committed "relate to a displacement of this conflict on the (national) territory”.
Jean-Paul Delescaut was absent for the deliberations and his lawyers did not wish to comment, only indicating that their client was appealing. “It is a very bad signal which is given in terms of freedom of expression on this conflict which is straining, to put it euphemistically, the political-media world”, on the other hand estimated the LFI deputy Ugo Bernalicis, who is returned to court.
During the hearing on March 28, the prosecutor estimated that the leaflet “constituted legitimization of a mass attack under the cover of a historical analysis”. The general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet and the leader of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon came to lend their support to Jean-Paul Delescaut.
The CGT du Nord had argued in a press release that “explaining is not justifying” and denounced “a very violent attack against trade unionism”.