The Saint-Brieuc criminal court (Côtes-d’Armor) sentenced a far-right activist on Thursday for hateful and antisemitic publications on social networks.
The defendant, Dorian Noël, 31 years old, without profession, was not present at the hearing.
He was found guilty of publicly inciting hatred or violence based on ethnicity, nation, race or religion. He received a 6-month suspended prison sentence, €5,000 in damages for the National Bureau of Vigilance against Antisemitism, which had filed a civil action, and €1,200 in reimbursement of legal costs. The judgment will also be published by the town hall of the man’s domicile.
He was on trial for posting numerous antisemitic and hateful messages on social media in recent years, compiled in part by the Jewish Defense League in 2020.
These posts showed him in particular performing Nazi salutes, “quenelles”, an antisemitic gesture by Dieudonné, or taking up antisemitic caricatures.
“The suspect was heard by the gendarmes on December 10, 2021,” said the president of the correctional court. He would have partially acknowledged the facts during his hearing, explaining to the gendarmes that “the quenelle is not an antisemitic gesture, it is a Masonic symbol” and that his remarks were “not racist but ethnological”.
The National Bureau of Vigilance against Antisemitism had been the only association to file a complaint against the man, with the Paris prosecutor, before the file was sent to Saint-Brieuc.
“It is always this ideology that precedes the passage to the act”, declared the lawyer of the BNVCA, Me Franck Serfati. “When we openly call for the death of certain people, as is the case here, it is not a style formula, a language, we are an offender. »
The association welcomed this Thursday the judgment rendered.
Dorian Noël will be summoned again by the justice of Saint-Brieuc next November for having tagged wind turbines in his Côtes-d’Armor village, Saint-Caradec, with swastikas, incitement to hatred and threats towards Emmanuel Macron the night of December 31, 2021.
