a man threatens to kill his mayor, six months in prison suspended

2023-08-11 15:45:16

A 27-year-old father was given a six-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday August 10 for threatening the mayor of his village in Hérault with death, the Béziers prosecutor’s office announced on Friday. The facts occurred Tuesday in Agel, a town of less than three hundred inhabitants, said in a press release the public prosecutor of Béziers, Raphaël Balland.

According to witnesses, “This man was reprimanding on the public highway two of his children, aged 7 and 8, who had left the home without permission, when the mayor of the village, residing nearby, decided to intervene by telling him that ‘he found his way of speaking to his children unsuitable’explained the prosecutor. “The father of the family then got angry, getting closer to the mayor, whose function he knew, saying several times that he was going to kill him”he continued.

Increase in violence against elected officials

The man, recently domiciled in the village, was immediately taken into custody. Judged in immediate appearance, he was sentenced by the correctional court of Béziers to “Six months’ imprisonment entirely accompanied by a probationary suspension for eighteen months, with the obligation to carry out community service for one hundred and forty hours, to compensate the civil party (one symbolic euro) and to carry out citizenship coursesaid the prosecutor.

The father of the family “was no longer in a state of legal recidivism, but his criminal record bore traces of thirteen mentions mainly for acts of driving without a license, thefts, insults and death threats”added Mr. Balland.

At the beginning of May, the various right-wing mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique), Yannick Morez, whose home had been targeted by a fire, had resigned with a bang after months of tension around the displacement of a center reception center for asylum seekers near a school in his municipality. Acts of physical or verbal violence against elected officials increased in France by 32% in 2022, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The government had announced the adoption of a series of measures by the end of the year to strengthen “the safety of local elected officials and the protection of mayors”.

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The World with AFP