The Paris Court of Appeal has increased the sentences imposed on two Internet users, retried for having participated in the cyberbullying of the young Mila after her controversial video on Islam, by sentencing them on Tuesday January 31 to two years and one year in prison suspended. Three years ago, the young girl, then a minor, had been the target of a first series of hundreds of hate messages on social networks, forcing her to leave her school and live under police protection.
Two of the defendants sentenced in July 2021 by the Paris Criminal Court for this “lynching 2.0”at the end of one of the very first hearings devoted to the new offense of cyberbullying, had appealed.
The youngest of them, aged 20, was sentenced on appeal on Tuesday to two years’ imprisonment accompanied by a probationary suspension of two years, including in particular the obligation to compensate the civil parties and to fulfill citizenship course. The court found him guilty of aggravated harassment and death threats, an accumulation of qualifications which had not been retained at first instance. He was being prosecuted for writing to Mila in the fall of 2020 “Tell me where you live where I’ll make you a Samuel Paty (sic)”named after the teacher who was beheaded for showing his students caricatures of Muhammad.
“Threatening with death is a serious offence”
The other Internet user, 31, received a one-year prison sentence with a probationary suspension for two years, with the same obligations as his co-defendant. The sentences are heavier than in the first instance: they were then respectively sentenced to six and four months of suspended imprisonment. The Court of Appeal also ordered them to pay 10,000 euros jointly and severally to Mila in compensation for her non-pecuniary damage.
“What I felt at the hearing was that these two defendants had understood nothing of the seriousness of what they were accused of and had no regrets. Obviously the court had the same feeling since it quadrupled and tripled their sentences “said Mila’s lawyer, Me Richard Malka. “It is a judgment which will, I hope, help to raise awareness that threatening to kill is a serious offence”he added.
The digital raid began in January 2020 when Mila, then 16.5 years old, responded to insults on social media about her sexual orientation through a vehement video about Islam. She had attracted a new round of threats after the publication of a second controversial video on November 14, 2020: “let her die”, “You deserve to have your throat cut”had written in particular the Internet users.