Franco-Algerian influencer Sofia Benlemmane will be judged on March 18

The Franco-Algerian influencer Sofia Benlemmane who had been placed in police custody on Thursday, after the publication of videos on TikTok, was referred this Saturday morning to the Lyon public prosecutor’s office who served her with a summons to appear before the Lyon criminal court .

“Death threats”

According to our information, the fifty-year-old will be judged on March 18 before the 6^e press chamber, chamber specializing in the offenses of defamation and public insults through the press, posters, etc. or on social networks.

She will be prosecuted for the following counts of prevention, indicates the Lyon public prosecutor’s office: “public and direct provocation without effect to commit a crime or misdemeanor, death threats by image, public insult due to sexual orientation or of gender identity and public insult because of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion. »

Judicial review required

Requisitions are presented to the judge of freedoms and detention in order to place Sofia Benlemmane under judicial supervision before her trial. It would prohibit the use of access accounts to online platform services that were used to commit the offenses.

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, saying “fuck your mother, you and your France”, “I hope you are killed, I hope they kill you.”

Her lawyer, Me 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 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.