six months of suspended sentence required for defendants

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Six months suspended sentence.

This is the sentence that the public prosecutor requested against each of the nine defendants, tried this Thursday December 19, 2024.

A tense trial, which was held before the criminal court of La Roche-sur-Yonbehind closed doors (the press was allowed to attend the debates).

A measure requested by the defense lawyer due to death threats against the defendants.

Nine young people aged 18 to 23

Aged 18 to 23, the nine accused – three girls and six boys from good families – with clean criminal records, had to explain the acts committed on March 8. A doubly symbolic day this year since in addition to being International Women's Rights Day, it marked the inclusion of the right to abortion in the French Constitution.

That morning, the nine young people, a group of friends, all activists at Action Française – a far-right political movement, with nationalist and royalist ideas – have defaced the statue of Simone Veil in La Roche-sur-Yonlocated on the eponymous square in the city center.

In a display described as “macabre and shocking”, seven bloodied babies were placed on the ground around the monument, Action Française stickers stuck to the statue and cardboard signs with anti-abortion slogans taped to the bust. in marble.

Red dye had been spilled into the water.

Filmed by video surveillance

An investigation was quickly opened, and video surveillance made it possible to identify the perpetrators.

“The investigators targeted Ices because it was known to the police that several active members of Action Française were educated there,” said the president of the court.

Comparing the video surveillance images with the students' trombinoscope allowed the police to identify a large number of the defendants.

In fact, seven of them were or are still students at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies, in history, law, literature or political science.

Walled in silence

Summoned to the police station, they walled themselves in silenceall formulating the same response: “I have nothing to declare. »

An attitude that questioned Céline Cuquemel, the president of the courtduring the hearing. “It’s the thugs, experienced in the exercise, who refuse to explain themselves to the police!” » she asked them, struggling to find answers to her questions.

“I’m not used to the police. I had seen on videos that it was better to remain silent if you did not have a lawyer,” explains one of the defendants.

“You are free to think what you want, but degradation is prohibited by law!” »

On the stand, the nine defendants are not very forthcoming.

If they all acknowledged their presence that day and their actions, with a role assigned to each, they are not very talkative about the preparation of the facts and their motivation.

We still learned that the action was decided “the day before”, that the red dye was provided by one of the defendants who had it at home, and that the babies were purchased the day before the misdeeds, from Emmaus.

“What is the meaning of all this? », asks the president again.

Personally, I think that abortion remains a murder of the unborn child.

The students explain their action by their desire to “make known” their anti-abortion beliefs. One considers the response to their action “disproportionate”.

“You are free to think what you want, but degradation is prohibited by law!” » harangues the judge, who points out the violent aspect of this staging, subject to the eyes of the children from the neighboring school.

“La Roche-sur-Yon has been denigrated. »

On the side of the civil parties, the City of La Roche-sur-Yon, represented by the head of the legal service Virginie Hutareck, assessed its moral damage at €4,500, due to the “significant media impact” of the case.

She claims €184.48 in material damage.

For Family Planning of Vendée, Maître Sophie Jauneau pleaded “that with regard to the date chosen, it is obvious that this is a direct attack on the right of women to dispose of their bodies”, the subject of this historical association.

It is an ideological, prepared action. The staging is particularly macabre, it was shocking.

She requests compensation of €900 for moral damage.

“Two birds with one stone”

For the public prosecutor, “the damage is small, but the harm is immense,” explains Fiammetta Esposito.

On a legal level, the monument has become “unfit to fulfill its initial function”, commemorative, in this case.

“There is therefore a serious deterioration of public property,” she explains.

Then the prosecutor returned to the fundamentally anti-Semitic history of Action Française, “this reactionary party” which stands “against certain rights that the State gives to others. »

We are in the presence of nine young people who acted with a specific goal: to denounce, against the tide of history, the right to abortion.

By targeting the figure of Simone Veil, “they wanted to kill two birds with one stone”, asserts the representative of the public prosecutor: an act that is both anti-Semitic and anti-abortion.

And to request six months suspended prison sentence for each of them, accompanied by a ban on civil rights and a ban on obtaining employment in the public service for five years.

In the name of “freedom of expression”

Maître Fabrice Delinde, the defense lawyer, who fumbles in his notes, invokes “freedom of expression” and contests the damage.

“They’re not even tags!” There was, in total, €184 in damage,” he pleads.

For him, the facts amount to “a fine of 4^e class” and no more. He denounces “a political trial” and the “morality” inflicted on his clients.

The matter was put under advisement. The young people will be fixed on their fate Thursday January 16 2025 at 1:45 p.m.

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