After the arrests of Algerian influencers in Brest, Grenoble and Montpellier for hate speech, a Franco-Algerian TikToker will appear in March in Lyon for having published “death threats” against opponents of the Algiers government.
Arrested on Thursday, “Sofia Benlemmane is referred today (Saturday) following her custody” and will be summoned before the Lyon criminal court on March 18, the Lyon prosecutor’s office said.
She is being prosecuted for “provocation to commit a crime or misdemeanor”, “death threats by image”, “public insult due to sexual orientation or gender identity” and “public insult due to origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion” according to the same source.
Followed on TikTok and Facebook by more than 300,000 people, the fifty-year-old will have to explain herself for videos published between 2023 and early 2025, in particular a live broadcast in September during which she insulted another woman, saying “fuck your mother, you and your France”, “I hope you will be killed, I hope they will kill you”.
She was presented Saturday afternoon to a judge of freedoms and detention who placed her under judicial supervision before her trial, with a ban on leaving the national territory and using her accounts on social networks, indicated her lawyer Frédéric Lalliard at AFP.
In front of the press, he contested any criminal offense in the remarks made against his client, referring to words which “may have been taken out of context or have not been translated correctly”.
“We are really in spontaneous conversations which sometimes go beyond reason, but which, in any case, have no ideological link with any government whatsoever, with any will on the part of Ms. Benlemmane d “insult, smear communities, other communities or other races,” he added.
– Diplomatic tensions –
This former football player had already made headlines in 2001 when she was given a seven-month suspended prison sentence and a three-year stadium ban for having entered the pitch of the Stade de France with an Algerian flag during a a France-Algeria friendly match.
If she firmly opposed the power in place in Algiers a few years ago, her speech has since radically changed and she now shows support for the current government.
Sofia Benlemmane is targeted with five other Algerian influencers by procedures in France for hate speech, often targeting opponents of the Algerian government, in a context of diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers.
On Monday, the Rhône prefecture indicated that it had made reports targeting three influencers based in Lyon: Ms. Benlemmane and two other TikTokers known under the names “Abdesslam Bazooka” and “Laksas06”. The accounts of the three Lyon influencers have “been permanently suspended for violating our community rules,” TikTok said.
Three other Algerian influencers are already the subject of prosecution for comparable content.
A 59-year-old Algerian nicknamed Doualemn, was arrested in Montpellier after a contentious video on TikToK then put on a plane Thursday afternoon for Algeria from where he was returned to France the same evening, Algeria having been “inadmissible”.
This episode aroused the anger of Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau who accused Algiers of seeking to “humiliate France”.
Arrested in Brest, a 25-year-old man named “Zazou Youssef” is accused of a video in which he called for attacks in France and violence in Algeria. Placed in pre-trial detention, he will be tried on February 24 for advocating terrorism and faces seven years in prison.
A 31-year-old man nicknamed “Imad Tintin” was arrested in the suburbs of Grenoble for a video, since removed, in which he called for “burning alive, killing and raping on French soil”. Also in custody, he will be tried on March 5 for provocation of acts of terrorism.
