2023-09-05 16:41:30
Far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, December 4, 2022, in Paris. ALAIN JOCARD/AFP
In a judgment of September 5, the Court of Cassation overturned the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal which had acquitted Eric Zemmour of the offense of contesting a crime against humanity. The far-right polemicist had notably affirmed that Philippe Pétain had ” Safe ” French Jews. Mr. Zemmour will again be tried for these facts before another court of appeal.
To fully understand the terms of this legal and historical debate, we must return to the statements that Eric Zemmour made in 2019, during a debate on CNews, facing Bernard-Henri Lévy. ” A day (…) you dared to say that Pétain had saved the French Jews. It is a monstrosity, it is revisionism”, Mr. Lévy was at first indignant. Mr. Zemmour had replied that he had to ” to specify “ he was talking about jews ” French “. Bernard-Henri Lévy insisted: “It’s a monstrosity, it’s revisionism! » And Mr. Zemmour concludes: “It is once again the real. »
In its judgment – much commented on – the Paris Court of Appeal considered in May 2022 that the offense of contesting a crime against humanity was not characterized because ” the sayings (…)if they can hurt the families of deportees (…)are not intended to contest or diminish, even marginally, the number of victims of deportation or the policy of extermination in the concentration camps.. She added that Pétain had not been “prosecuted for one or more crimes against humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal annexed to the London Agreement of August 8, 1945”. Faced with this decision, the Attorney General at the Paris Court of Appeal as well as five anti-racist associations – SOS-Racisme, the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF), the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between the peoples, I accuse! International Action for Justice, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism – had appealed to the Court of Cassation.
Claim “contrary to historical truth”
The highest court of the judiciary has undermined the reasoning of the Paris Court of Appeal. It considers that the alleged remarks may constitute the offense of contesting a crime against humanity, “even if they relate to a personality who has not been convicted of a crime against humanity [en l’espèce, Philippe Pétain]. Moreover, the Paris Court of Appeal should also have considered that by stating “It is once again the real”, Mr. Zemmour endorsed the remarks that Philippe Pétain had “saved the French Jews”. »
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