Thieves, murderers, rapists": Éric Zemmour definitively convicted for his remarks on CNews

The first case, the most publicized, concerns the statements made in September 2020 on the CNews set. The polemicist had described unaccompanied minors as "thieves", "murderers" and "rapists", adding that they had "no business being here" and that it was a "permanent invasion". For the Court of Cassation, the Paris Court of Appeal was right to condemn these remarks in September 2024. The judges considered that the violence and generality of the terms used exceeded the admissible limits of freedom of expression, denying them any legitimacy in the debate on immigration policy.

Éric Zemmour will have to pay a fine of one hundred days at 100 euros, i.e. a total of 10,000 euros for complicity in public insult and incitement to hatred. The publisher of the channel was fined 3,000 euros, while CNews had already been penalized 200,000 euros by the audiovisual regulator.

A second conviction for defamation confirmed

On the same day, the Court also sealed the fate of another case involving the former presidential candidate. He contested his conviction for defaming lawyer Patrick Klugman in the Jeremy Cohen case, the young Jewish man fatally hit by a tram in Bobigny in 2022.

On the France 2 set, just days before the first round of the election, Éric Zemmour had claimed that the family’s lawyer wanted to "absolutely smother the case". These remarks earned him a final fine of 1,000 euros. At the time, the prosecution had concluded that there was no evidence to support an anti-Semitic motive in the young man’s death, contrary to the public questions raised by the politician.