Saturday, November 28, 2020

France: 18 Months for Threatening to Behead Teacher

In the wake of the recent beheading murder of  Samuel Paty, a French teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in his class, a number of copy-cat threats have occurred in France. In Nice, a 19-year-old man, who threatened a French teacher with beheading, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. The below article from Le Figaro is translated by Fousesquawk.

https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/nice-un-jeune-condamne-a-18-mois-de-prison-ferme-pour-avoir-menace-un-professeur-de-le-faire-mourir-comme-samuel-paty-20201128


Nice: Youth sentenced to 18 months in prison for having threatened to kill a teacher "like Samuel Paty"

A young man of 19, with no record, sentenced for threatening a teacher with death on social media

-by Le Figaro with AFP, published yesterday (11-27-20) at 13:23, updated yesterday at 14:20

A young man of 19 has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for having threatened to kill a teacher "like Samuel Paty", in reference to the teacher decapitated in October in Val d'Oise, the prosecutor of Nice reported Saturday.

Judged in an immediate appearance, Friday 27 November, the defendant defended himself, according to an account of the hearing published by the daily, Nice-Matin, explaining that it was a "joke" only intended to show off in front of  (another) young high school student.

This young man, holder of a professional baccalaureate and presently finished with school, had gotten wind on social media of an incident that had happened in one of the teacher's classes. The latter, a  teacher for some 30 years, had asked certain pupils for an explanation, who were suspected of having cheated during a "white" baccalaureate test. 

The defendant had then succeeded in obtaining the private account address of the teacher on another social media, in order to be able to threaten him with a similar death to that of Samuel Paty, a teacher killed by a young man after having shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad to his pupils during a course on freedom of expression.

"My client has lived through two very difficult weeks," explains Julien Darras, lawyer for the civil part (of the case-representing the victim). This teacher was forced to stop his courses and remove his name from his mailbox, while the police were identifying the author of the threats.

The defendant, with a clean record, faced up to 7 years of imprisonment for public support of terrorist acts by electronic means and death threat. He has ten days to file an appeal of this judgment accompanied by an immediate custody warrant.

Since the attack that struck the faithful of a Nice church on 29 October, more than 20 cases for (verbally) supporting terrorism have been conducted by the prosecutor's office of Nice, stated Xavier Bonhomme, national prosecutor. One man had already been sentenced to 18 months in prison for having threatened people in the proximity of this religious edifice, the magistrate added,.

Since the murder of Professor Samuel Paty on October 16, acts of (verbally) supporting terrorism and death threats have multiplied. A resident of Roubaix, 21 years of age, convert to Islam, was sentenced on November 19 in Lille to 18 months of prison, including 12 months probationary suspension for supporting terrorism on social media. In Var, at the end of October, another young man was sentenced to 18 months in prison with a committal warrant, for similar acts of supporting terrorism. According to Franceinfo, 187 cases have been opened in France for "threats", "Provocation to commit violent infractions," or "supporting terrorism", since the death of  Samuel Paty


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