Rapper Booba, already in trouble with the law in a cyberstalking case, will soon be tried in Paris for discriminatory insults towards a journalist and an essayist, and for cyberstalking, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Thursday, requested by AFP.
The public prosecutor specified that the rapper, real name Elie Yaffa, was presented on Tuesday to a public prosecutor who gave him a summons to a hearing at the Paris court on December 3 for public insults of a discriminatory nature concerning a journalist, Linh-Lan Dao, and the essayist Tristan Mendès France, but also for aggravated cyberharassment concerning the first.
Until then, he is placed under judicial supervision with a ban on having contact with the victims and must pay bail.
“Booba is perfectly serene”
“It is a chamber specializing in press law which will hear this case. Booba is perfectly calm and reserves his explanations for the court,” reacted his lawyers, Me Marie Roumiantseva and Gilles Vercken.
It was not immediately possible to know whether the hearing on December 3 would be procedural or would allow the defendant to actually be tried for these facts.
Concerning the journalist, Booba must be judged mainly for aggravated cyberstalking and discriminatory public insults for comments published on X in January 2024, referring to his origins.
Ilana Soskin, Linh-Lan Dao’s lawyer, told AFP that her client would become a civil party at the hearing. “The harassment she suffered and the insults based on her origin which were uttered by Booba, followed and relayed by hundreds of Internet users, cannot go unpunished,” she declared.
Regarding the essayist Tristan Mendès France, specialist in digital cultures at Paris-Cité University, Booba will have to respond to messages on
Asked by AFP, Mr. Mendès France clarified that he was not at the origin of the procedure, nor did he intend to become a civil party in this case. “With his imprint on X, his messages triggered a spectacular flood of anti-Semitic comments,” he said.
“You have to have a lamentable historical culture not to remember the anti-Semitic attacks against the name Mendès France and particularly Pierre Mendès France”, President of the Council under the Fourth Republic, “whose effigy was brandished during the Pétainist exhibition on the Jews”, he added.
Booba has also been indicted since October 2023 and under judicial supervision for aggravated online moral harassment against the former queen of influencers Magali Berdah.
