How, behind his screen, a 19-year-old Belfortain with no history was able to share the worst horrors on social networks? This is the question that the Belfort criminal court had to answer this Tuesday, December 17. From October 28 to 29, 2023, he publishes photos and videos relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Two weeks after the Hamas attacks, the young Internet user relayed images of the massacre. We see men in combat gear, corpses of Israeli soldiers and scenes of war. In total, nine Hamas propaganda contents are found on its X profile (ex-Twitter). It was following a notification on Pharos, the platform which allows illicit content to be reported online, that the defendant was identified.
“Distinction between Hamas and its terrorist branch”
Investigators trace his IP address then that of his home. Initially, it is the father of the family, with whom the young man is staying, who is interviewed by the police. The latter has no idea of his son’s actions. If the whole family is Muslim, the children are not practicing. Questioned about these tweets, the Belfortain quickly admitted to being the author. During his hearing, he will explain “distinguishing between Hamas, which is a resistance movement against the colonization of Israel, and its terrorist branch”, while “not condoning” the October 7 attacks.
Difficult explanations
In court, it is a sheepish young man who takes the stand to answer for apologizing for terrorism. Unknown to the justice system, he seems impressed by the situation. To the simple question from President Jean-Philipp Ghnassia, “Why did you post these messages?” », the person concerned struggles to justify himself. “I don’t know, it was a troll, I didn’t think about it. »
“I have the impression of having a lost child in front of me,” retorts the president. Do you realize that these messages can encourage people to take up arms? How did you get there? » Still uncomfortable, as if he did not want a word to be misinterpreted, he assures that his intention “was not to generate violence. »
Not a radical profile
Throughout the hearing, the young man does not show the profile of a radicalized person. Franco-Algerian, he refuses to go to Algeria for fear of joining the army and performing his military service. When asked simple questions about the history of the conflict in the Middle East (“do you know the date of the creation of Israel?”), he is unable to answer. For its requisitions, the public prosecutor favors socio-judicial monitoring: “We are far from the troll and everything that was posted is very real and ultra-violent. »
In defense, Mr. Giagnolini recalls that the events only lasted two days and that the account was suspended in January by the defendant, even before being questioned by the courts. “Today you have abject remarks made on TV sets by columnists who are never worried and today we are going to condemn a child who has not managed to have nuance on his own in front of his screen? While this doesn’t take away from what he did, this story is about a child who still has to grow up. » After long deliberations, the court decided to pronounce the sentence of six months in prison with a simple suspended sentence, two years of socio-judicial monitoring and registration in Fijait, the file of perpetrators of terrorist offenses.
