This founder of an extreme right site said that the worst attack in an American school, in 2012, was only a staging managed by opponents of firearms.
Le Monde with AFP
The far -right conspirator Alex Jones was sentenced on Friday August 5, by a Texas court, to pay an additional fine of $ 45.2 million (more than 44 million euros) to parents of A boy died in Sandy Hook’s killing in 2012.
This is added to the $ 4.1 million in compensatory damages, decided Thursday by the court, which Alex Jones must also pay to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, whose six -year -old son, Jesse Lewis , died during the massacre that occurred in this Connecticut school.
The founder of the Infowars site – which was not in the courtroom to hear the verdict on Friday – had denied the reality of this bloody attack, the worst never occurred in an American school. A young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed twenty children and six adults, and Alex Jones, a known figure in the far right and follower of conspiracy theories, had, against all obvious, affirmed on his site that the massacre was only a staging managed by opponents of firearms.
Damages decided on Friday are called “punitive” – a specificity of American law which does not exist in France in particular. They aim to dissuade the condemned recurrence, as well as anyone to commit the same act. In total, Alex Jones will therefore have to pay $ 49.3 million to the parents of Jesse Lewis.
Other financial sanctions should follow
Wesley Ball, the lawyer for the latter, launched, on Friday, to the jurors before they decide: “You have the capacity to send a message to the whole country, even to the world (…). And It consists in arresting Alex Jones. Stop the monetization of disinformation and lies “. Mr. Ball asked them to “make sure he could no longer start again”.
These sorrows are only the first in a series of procedures brought by relatives of the victims of Sandy Hook’s killing against this influential Trumpist militant. Several families pursued him in court to obtain compensation. He had finally admitted publicly the reality of the killing, while refusing to cooperate with the courts.
Texas and Connecticut judges had therefore condemned it by default to pay damages to the complainants, while leaving it to jurors to fix their amount. Other financial sanctions should follow soon and may deprive Alex Jones of his platform, even if the real financial health of his company fuels many debates.
The killings – recurrent in the United States – are often the subject of conspiracy theories questioning the reality of the facts, which sometimes cause the harassment of relatives of victims, accused of lying.