‘That’s the reason why people are committed to Daesh. What happens, you messed up yourselves. We will blow everything up. These words were allegedly spoken by an inmate at the Carquefou prison in Nantes, according to a female guard, when she accompanied him alone to his cell on the 9th of May 2024.
I took his words as a threat to the prison administration in general,’ said the warden in the minutes read out at the hearing before the criminal court on Friday the 19th of July 2024.
To the surprise of the prosecution, however, the prison administration did not press charges over these incidents. This is a kind of trivialisation of these statements,’ reacted the public prosecutor, who demanded a prison sentence of ten months without parole.
The lawyer for the defendant, who was released on July 17 after serving his last sentence for domestic violence, pointed out that there was no confrontation during the disciplinary committee either. We asked for video surveillance, which we did not receive, and we did not listen to any other prisoners,’ says lawyer Aristote Toussaint.
The 43-year-old Tunisian, who lives legally in the country, explains through his interpreter that he never said anything like that: ‘The warden probably caught the wrong prisoner. But he can also express himself better in his native language than in French. I love France, I love living in France and I love life.
‘I think Monsieur was mistaken for someone else,’ continues lawyer Toussaint. We wanted to act too quickly in this case.
Twenty minutes later, the prisoner was finally acquitted of the charge of glorifying terrorism because there was insufficient evidence.
Le détenu nantais poursuivi pour apologie du terrorisme relaxé (ouest-france.fr)