The far -right weekly weekly, already sentenced at first instance, had portrayed the deputy as a slave in August 2020.
Le Monde with AFP
The Director of Current Values (VA), Erik Monjalous, and a journalist from the weekly, Laurent Jullien, were sentenced on appeal Thursday, November 16 to a fine of 1,000 euros suspended for public insult Danièle Obono MP (LFI).
They are also condemned by the Paris Court of Appeal to pay 5,000 euros in damages to Ms. Obono as well as a symbolic euro for associations having set up civil parties with the deputy.
These penalties are lower than those pronounced at first instance: in October 2021, Erik Monjalous and Laurent Jullien had been sentenced to a fine of 1,500 euros each and to pay 5,000 euros in damages to M me OBONO. Thursday, the editorial director of VA, Geoffroy Lejeune, also sentenced at first instance, was released from all the proceedings against him.
In August 2020, the magazine had published a seven -page story entitled “Obono the African”, in which he told how the elected official of Paris born in Gabon, portrayed as a slave, experienced “the responsibility of the Africans in the Horrors of slavery “in the 18th century e century. The article, accompanied by drawings representing the deputy iron necklace on the neck, had been unanimously condemned by the whole political class, President Emmanuel Macron in mind.
At the bar of the court of appeal, the elected official had come to say that she felt “always a certain discomfort” since this affair. “The references of the images, the justifications that are made around, I always feel the injustice made to me and the humiliation it was,” she said.
The author of the article, Laurent Jullien, had explained that “the principle of this episode was to demonstrate what this slavery was in reality”. In his indictment, the Advocate General Michel Lernoux had recalled that “it is essentially because of its origin” that Danièle Obono had been chosen. He had required 10,000 euros fine against Laurent Jullien, Geoffroy Lejeune and Erik Monjalous.