CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

CYIL 15 ȍ2024Ȏ UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF “APOLOGY OF TERRORISM” … a person reduced to slavery or crimes and offenses of collaboration with the enemy, including if these crimes did not give rise to the conviction of their perpetrators. 11 After being acquitted by the court in Avignon, the applicant and his sister got sentenced by the Court of Appeal in Nîmes that decided the case in the second instance. The penalties imposed on the applicant were two months of imprisonment and a fine of 4,000 EUR. The Court considered that the writings on the t-shirt without any doubt refer to the events of 11 September 2001, when thousands of people lost their lives in a terrorist attack. The child’s name and his birthday were considered by the Court to be only a pretext for apology of terrorism, of an act of mass killing of innocent people. Moreover, according to the Court, the applicant and the child’s mother instrumentalised the child and used him as an innocent and unconscious bearer of the messages on the t-shirt in a nursery school only several months after a terrorist attack in one of the nursery schools in France, in which three children got killed. For these reasons the behaviour of the applicant and the child’s mother could not be regarded merely as a joke in a very bad taste. The cassation of the applicant to the French Cour de cassation was ineffective. The ECtHR agreed with French interpretation of the freedom of expression and emphasized that within Article 10 ECHR states dispose of wide margin of appreciation and generally national courts are more apt do evaluate local conditions relating to terrorist threat and the risk posed by the incriminating t-shirt. The Court noticed that the right to humorous expression is not unlimited and a person who is making use of this right should take on oneself certain obligations and responsibilities. According to the ECHR, the incriminating expressions at stake could not have been regarded as a mere joke, but they constituted a deliberate will to promote criminal acts by presenting them favourably. As the Court underlined, some features of the child, as his name and birthdate, and the use of the word “bomb” served only as a pretext to promote terrorist acts, without any doubt, by deliberate use of terms referring to mass violence and wilful attacks on life. The ECtHR took also into account the problems that France was facing at that time with combatting terrorism, being a primary concern of a public interest in a democratic society. The Court concluded that the penalty imposed on the applicant did not trespass the limits imposed by the principle of proportionality. 3. Commentary The argumentation of the ECtHR is not convincing, and it might be considered to be contrary to other case-law of the Court. The Court should not substitute its own assessment with the one made by the national authorities. The Court’s task in this area is not to take 11 ‘ Seront punis de cinq ans d’emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d’amende ceux qui, par l’un des moyens énoncés à l’article précédent, auront directement provoqué, dans le cas où cette provocation n’aurait pas été suivie d’effet, à commettre l’une des infractions suivantes: 1. Les atteintes volontaires à la vie, les atteintes volontaires à l’intégrité de la personne et les agressions sexuelles, définies par le livre II du code pénal; [...] Seront punis de la même peine ceux qui, par l’un des moyens énoncés en l’article 23, auront fait l’apologie des crimes visés au premier alinéa, des crimes de guerre, des crimes contre l’humanité, des crimes de réduction en esclavage ou d’exploitation d’une personne réduite en esclavage ou des crimes et délits de collaboration avec l’ennemi, y compris si ces crimes n’ont pas donné lieu à la condamnation de leurs auteurs ’.

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