Dieudonné condemned for the 35th time: six months electronic monitoring and €5,000 fine
Polemicist Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala was sentenced to six months of home detention under electronic monitoring for glorification of terrorism and insult towards Laurent Nuñez.
35th conviction for Dieudonné: electronic monitoring for glorification of terrorism
Paris correctional court condemned polemicist Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala on Thursday to six months in prison in the form of home detention with electronic monitoring, according to 20minutes.fr. This is his 35th conviction.
The judges also imposed a fine of €5,000, three years of ineligibility, as well as damages of €1,000 to the European Jewish Organisation and one symbolic euro to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.
The first charge relates to a video published on X on 7 October 2024, the day marking the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israeli soil, which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. In this two-minute film, viewed one million times, Dieudonné—who had 34 convictions at that time—described that date as "marvellous, extraordinary, magical", before clarifying that he was referring to his daughter's birthday, born on 7 October fifteen years earlier.
The judges rejected this explanation, noting an "instrumentalisation" and a "rhetorical device, constructed on a contrivance", considering that this device "thus allows him to present the terrorist attacks of 7 October in a very favourable light".
A second video, published after the fire targeting the synagogue in La Grande-Motte (Hérault) in August 2024, was also held against him. In it, Dieudonné suggested that this fire could be "a response to the hatred and racism poured out without restraint by certain Jews in France since 7 October"—remarks qualified by the court as "glorification of terrorism".
During the hearing on 17 June, the polemicist defended himself by presenting himself primarily as an artist. "I am a comedian. I am neither a politician, nor an intellectual, nor a sociologist. I have been making French people laugh for nearly forty years", he declared. His lawyer argued for a register of "dark humour".
Dieudonné was also convicted of public insult towards Laurent Nuñez, then prefect of police in Paris, following an order prohibiting one of his performances. In a video with his face distorted by a grotesque filter, he addressed Nuñez in terms the court judged to exceed "the admissible limits of the right to freedom of expression".
Having stood as a candidate on nine occasions for various elections over nearly thirty years, Dieudonné now adds another conviction to an already particularly heavy criminal record.
Source: Google News LU FR