Rabat – A 50-year-old French woman will be tried in June for calling the increasingly unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron a “scumbag” on Facebook, according to a report from the France Press Agency (AFP).
The yellow vest activist is accused of insulting the French president and faces up to €12,000 in fines, the report noted.
According to AFP, the woman was arrested at her home Friday and placed in police custody. The arrest came following a complaint filed by the district where the woman lives; the district accused the Yellow vest activist of “contempt for a person in public authority” and “insult to the President of the Republic.”
Une femme a été interpellée à son domicile par 3 policiers et placée en garde à vue pour avoir traité Emmanuel #Macron d’”ordure” sur Facebook. Elle encourt jusqu’à un an de prison et 15.000 euros d’amende. (VDN) #MacronOrdure #greve28mars #Manif28Mars #France #ReformeDesRetaites pic.twitter.com/BVMTl1jYbB
— Anonyme Citoyen (@AnonymeCitoyen) March 29, 2023
The complaint includes a message published “on the personal page” of the activist on March 21, the day before an interview with Macron that fueled public anger as he said that his government would continue to push for the controversial, widely decried pension reform.
“The scumbag will talk to you tomorrow at 1 p.m, for people who don’t know, it is always on television that we find the garbage,” the woman said in her Facebook post.
After the district filed its complaint, reports in the French media quoted the activist as insisting that she is only one of the large number of people in France who have insulted Macron on social media over the past weeks. “They want to make an example of me,” she stressed.
The news of the woman’s arrest is triggering a widespread backlash on social networks across France. On Twitter, French Politician François Ruffin denounced the trial, writing: “7 hours of custody and a search for a doormat of Macron. Soon the return of the crime against the crown?”
According to the prosecutor “generally, few complaints” are filed for this type of incidents, and investigations are only opened “when there is a precedent. One report detailed that the woman will be tried on June 20 at 1:30 pm at the judicial court of Saint-Omer.”
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