Justice in france

From Richard Landes at Augean Stables:

L’Express, a major French weekly had the decision up at it’s website within two hours, able to cite verbatim from a document that in principle cannot be released until signed by the court.... I remind readers that I do not have the judgment yet, so I cannot judge either the article or the Judges on the basis of any more than what’s written here. It may be that the language of this article has been cherry-picked to put Karsenty in a bad light. But harsh it is.

Unfortunately Landes’ link to L’Express doesn’t work; the closest I can get is this arrow at their site: http://www.lexpress.fr/recherche/default.asp , but it doesn’t go anywhere. Sorry, but here’s what they said as quoted by Landes:

The image of a Palestinian child felled by bullets, diffused by the French station France2 in 2000, and become the symbol of the Palestinian Intifada, cannot be considered a montage or a staged scene, the correctional tribunal of Paris judged.

Against the advice of the floor [i.e., the Procureur] who recommended dropping the charges, the judges condemned Philippe Karsenty, the animator of the websit Media Ratings (www.M-R.fr) for "public defamation" of Charles Enderlin and France2.

Philippe Karsenty is also condemned to pay one symbolic Euro of damages to each of the plaintiffs, as well as 3000 Euros of court costs. He announced to the journalists that he intended to appeal the process and promised that he will present the "proofs" of his claims would be up at his website in the coming days.

An extraordinary judgement since the procureur recommended dropping the charges because Enderlin did nothing whatever to make his case. He produced no witnesses and refused to produce the rushes on which Karsenty’s criticisms (and Landes’s) are based. The procureur was angry about that and thus her (ignored) recommendation. Since all Enderlin produced was a letter from Jacques Chirac, we can conclude that justice in France depends on who, not what, you know. The law in France has ever been in thrall to aristocratic brutality punctuated only by brief murderous episodes of mob revenge. Sue me.

Check out Landes's website, www.seconddraft.org