Dozens of complaints have been filed by journalists and associations in France to the Paris prosecutor’s office following death threats made on the far-right website “Réseau Libre”, hosted in the Russian Federation.
The information was received on Tuesday from some of the applicants.
In October, some 180 journalists, elected representatives and trade unionists signed an opinion piece in the Communist Party-affiliated daily newspaper L’Humanité, in which they asked the government to “defend by any means the free exercise of their mission,” on the occasion of the States General of Information.
Shortly after, Rede Livre published a “list of candidates for a bullet in the back of the head” with the names of subscribers.
These threats have resurfaced in recent days, with the same website calling for the “elimination” of lawyers who wrote an article against the far-right National Rally party published between the two rounds of France’s snap legislative elections.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into these threats.
As for the 180 subscribers to the L’Humanité article, some 40 complaints have already been filed and another 30 are expected to be filed this week, according to a joint statement from the SNJ, CGT, CFDT and FO union bodies.
The journalists’ unions and the European and International Federations of Journalists “want to ensure that the facts do not go unpunished”. As they denounced: “These bandits in bags are promoting hysteria in public debate, well hidden behind the computer.”
The box was also presented by the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as other collectives and networks of information professionals, such as Forbidden Stories.
“Réseau Livery” is located in the Russian Federation, which “makes any judicial cooperation to establish the author of the facts impossible,” RSF regretted in a statement.
The public interest group Francemédias Monde, which includes international television channel France 24 and Radio France Internationale (RFI), whose journalists were attacked, said it had mobilised its “legal management, editorial security and fight against disinformation”.