Nine women and four men are appearing in court for pouring out a flood of malicious comments on the publications of Isabelle Rauch, former LREM deputy of Moselle, Nicole Bonnefoy, senator of Charente from the Socialist Party, and Michel Slama, a doctor at the CHU of Amiens-Picardie. The defendants, who come from various professions and regions, face a possible sentence of up to three years in prison and a 30,000 euro fine.
Although they do not know each other, they had all joined the Telegram channel of the “V_V” anti-vaccine group, of Italian origin, at that time. They relayed copy-paste hate messages on targeted publications, as some of them testified on the first day of the trial.
“Complicit in a crime against humanity”, “collaborators of a Nazi system”, “pro-Nazi psychopaths” are among the messages that Aart P., Sylvie T., Xavier J., and others wrote in July 2021 on a video of Professor Slama, who is in favor of Covid-19 vaccination. Sometimes these messages were accompanied by photos of the doctor, with a swastika drawn on his forehead.
A similar pattern emerged with Nicole Bonnefoy, who in September 2021 shared on Facebook about a proposed law aimed at making vaccination mandatory, and with Isabelle Rauch, whose case will be heard on Tuesday. The two parliamentarians were not present at the trial on Monday.
In court, Aart P. and the majority of the defendants denied any “personal attack”, sometimes downplaying the weight of their words. When asked if referring to Nazism is not violent, the fifty-year-old man answered “No”.
Others, like Sylvie T., a 49-year-old nursing assistant, mentioned a “period of stress” caused by the pandemic, which reminded her of “dark times in history” and sparked a “certain anger”. Leila G., a 45-year-old marketing manager, wanted to “make the voice of a minority heard”. The president of the court considered it a way of “shifting responsibility”.
