In 2018, the leader of La France Insoumise had accused Paulo Paranagua of having contributed to the arrest of an opponent of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
Le Monde with AFP
Jean-Luc Mélenchon was sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal on Wednesday, June 29, for defamation against a former journalist in the world.
In February 2018, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) had written on Facebook a message reproaching journalist Paulo Paranagua for having contributed to the arrest of an opponent of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973 -1990) in Chile. “It was Paulo Paranagua who swung him? Solidarity with the victims of Latin dictators,” wrote Mr. Mélenchon.
At first instance, the criminal court had not recognized a defamatory character on these words. In the judgment consulted by the France-Presse agency, the Court of Appeal explained that “these remarks, even expressed in doubtful form with a question mark at the end of the disputed sentence, insinu [have] nevertheless that Paulo Paranagua was able to help make this political activist a victim of dictators “.
sentenced in a second case
Mr. Paranagua’s lawyer, Vincent Toledano, denounced reproaches without “no kind of foundation” and “totally imaginary”. Condemned to pay a symbolic euro of damages to the journalist specializing in Latin America, Mr. Mélenchon will also have to compensate the victim up to 2,000 euros under legal costs.
He is also the subject of another complaint by Mr. Paranagua, which he had described as “repentant assassin” on his blog “the era of the people” in 2016. Mr. Mélenchon was sentenced to first case ; The lawyers of the former MP for Bouches-du-Rhône appealed the judgment.
m. Paranagua had also attacked Mr. Mélenchon for the absence, at the time, of legal notices on the site Melenchon.fr, claiming that this had prevented him from assigning him in Civil Development.