Nine students, activists of Action Française, were sentenced on Thursday January 16 to a fine of 500 euros each by the court of La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée) for having vandalized a bust of Simone Veil in March 2024.
The activists of the far-right royalist movement, only two of whom were present to hear their sentence, were also ordered to pay more than 4,600 euros to the town of La Roche-sur-Yon for moral and material damage.
These sanctions are lower than the requests of the public prosecutor who had requested, during a hearing in mid-December, a six-month suspended prison sentence and a temporary ban on civil rights.
Damage claimed
Action française de Vendée had claimed responsibility on social networks for the damage committed on March 8, 2024 on this statue of Simone Veil, soiled with red paint and covered with a slogan hostile to voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG).
In a video accompanying the claim, we could see around ten people filmed from behind placing baby dolls sprinkled with fake blood at the foot of the statue and then dyeing the water in the fountain that the statue overlooks red.
They had also placed pieces of cardboard under the bust of Simone Veil stating that “the Constitution is killing our children”.
-The protest message published on social networks by Action française de Vendée established a direct link between this macabre scene and “the ceremony of the inclusion of abortion in the French Constitution” organized the same day in Paris.
Simone Veil is particularly known for having adopted the law decriminalizing abortion in France, the 50th anniversary of which we celebrate on Friday, January 17, 1975.
The statue of Simone Veil had already been vandalized with paint in 2019, less than a week after the inauguration of the square bearing her name in La Roche-sur-Yon.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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