Legal proceedings targeting Algerian “influencers” are increasing. A Franco-Algerian “influencer”, arrested Thursday January 9 as part of an investigation into hateful videos online, was presented to the public prosecutor’s office on Saturday, the Lyon prosecutor’s office and its lawyer told Agence France-Presse, specifying that a hearing will be held on March 18.
“The said influencer Sofia Benlemmane is referred today at the end of her police custody, for the purpose of serving her with a summons to appear on March 18, 2025 before the Lyon criminal court”reported the prosecution. 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.
Followed on TikTok and Facebook by more than 300,000 people, the fifty-year-old notably insulted another woman during a live broadcast in September, by throwing her “fuck your mother, you and your France”, “I hope you get killed, I hope they kill you”.
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Support for the Algerian government
“Requisitions are presented to the judge of freedoms and detention for the purpose of placing the person concerned under judicial supervision before her trial, including a ban” to use their accounts on social networks. Her lawyer, Frédéric Lalliard, contests any criminal offense in the comments the young woman is accused of, even if they “may irritate or shock”.
-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.
Since the beginning of January, Sofia Benlemmane has been targeted, like 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.
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