Race hatred conviction

JEWISH far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour (pictured) was convicted on Monday of inciting racial hatred over comments he made in 2020 about unaccompanied migrant children.

A Paris court ordered Zemmour to pay a fine of 10,000 euros and several thousand euros in damages to anti-racism groups.

Zemmour’s lawyer, Olivier Pardo, said he advised his client to appeal the decision.

Zemmour, who has two prior hate speech convictions, went on trial in November on charges of “public insult” and “incitement to hatred or violence” against a group of people because of their ethnic, national, racial or religious origin.

The former TV pundit, who is running in April’s presidential election, is considered to be among the major challengers to centrist President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as the front-runner according to polls.

The case against Zemmour focused on September 2020 comments that he made on French news broadcaster CNews about children who migrate to France without parents or guardians.

“They’re thieves, they’re murderers, they’re rapists. That’s all they are. We must send them back,” he said. “These people cost us money.”

In a statement in November, Zemmour denounced “an attempt to intimidate him” from prosecutors and anti-racist groups. He maintained his comments and said political debate doesn’t take place in courts.

Zemmour is also set to go on appeal trial on Thursday on a charge of contesting crimes against humanity – illegal in France – for arguing in a 2019 television debate that Marshal Philippe Petain, head of Vichy’s collaborationist government during World War II, saved France’s Jews from the Holocaust.

A court acquitted him last year, saying Zemmour’s comments negated Petain’s role in the extermination, but explained that he wasn’t convicted because he had spoken in the heat of the moment.

Zemmour has repeated similar comments in recent months, and lawyers contesting his acquittal plan to cite that point as evidence in the appeal trial.

Zemmour previously was convicted of incitement to racial hatred after justifying discrimination against Black and Arab people in 2010, and of incitement to religious hatred for anti-Islam comments in 2016.

TIMES OF ISRAEL