The Real Madrid forward has been involved in a true political hurricane in France. The Minister of the Interior of France, Gérald Darmanin, dropped a real bombshell when he accused the French footballer of having “notorious links with the Muslim Brotherhood”, an Islamic organization considered terrorist in France. Some statements that come just after the forward positioned himself in favor of the Palestinian people in Israel’s War against Hamas.
“All our prayers are with the inhabitants of Gaza who are once again victims of these unjust bombings that do not spare women or children,” the Al-Ittihad player published.
In France it has not been well received that he wrote a message in favor of the victims of Gaza but “never made reference to the murdered professor or the victims on the Israeli side.”
Faced with such accusations, the striker is considering legal action, but from the Ministry of the Interior, far from backing down, they justify the accusation launched by Darmanin in several actions by the player that constitute “a drift towards a hard, rigorous Islam, characteristic of the ideology.” of the Muslim Brotherhood “which consists of disseminating Islamic norms in different spaces of society, especially in sports.”
The French authorities recall that the forward was photographed next to the Imam of Meaux, investigated in the context of the murder of Professor Samuel Paty, beheaded in 2020 by an Islamist of Chechen origin. They also underline Benzema’s support for the Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, who published a message wishing “that the Almighty disfigure this trash” of Emmanuel Macron and “to all his disciples who, in the name of freedom of expression, insult the faith of more of 1.5 billion Muslims.
For the Interior, all these cases do not allow him to be taken to court, but “they constitute a particularly ambiguous signal for an athlete who has so many audiences.”
A STORY THAT LASTS FOR YEARS
However, these accusations against Benzema are not new and it was the social media messages of the far-right politician Damien Rieu in 2020 that set off the alarms of the French authorities. At that time, the Real Madrid attacker already sued Rieu for accusing him of being a terrorist in two tweets. The first of this, carried out in October of that year, linked Karim with an alleged murderer: “Interesting to discover that Benzema frequents the imam Nourdine Mamoune, who has just been investigated (for the murder of Samuel Paty, although he was never prosecuted). “I look forward to the courts taking an interest in the financing of the mosques in Bron (the region where Benzema comes from).”
A month later, the member of the Reconquista party returned to the fray with an even harsher message: “I think Benzema wants to send us a message,” said Rieu along with an image of the player raising his index finger to the sky and photos of several terrorists who make the same movement since, according to experts, the Islamic State has tried to appropriate it.
In this context, Benzema’s lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, was forced to file a lawsuit and issue a strong warning to the French government. “The multi-repeat far-right activist Damien Lefèvre (Damien Rieu’s real name) is fueling hatred. His latest tweet equates Benzema with a terrorist. Do we have to wait for a new tragedy to react? ”He asked himself, and tagged Emmanuel Macron and the Minister of the Interior.
WHO IS DAMIÉN RIEU?
Damien Rieu, born August 27, 1989 in the Lyon region, is a French far-right activist and politician. In the 2010s, he became one of the most publicized activists – particularly on Twitter – of the identitarian movement in France. He is, notably, co-founder and spokesperson of Génération Identitaire, a far-right movement dissolved by the Ministry of the Interior in 2021. He is often described as an influential guru in conspiracy circles. He later joined the Reconquête (Reconquest) party, supporting Éric Zemmour’s candidacy for the 2022 presidential elections. After Zemmour’s defeat in the elections, Damien Rieu failed to be elected in the 2022 legislative elections: he obtained 10.7 % of the votes, being eliminated in the second round.
But his history of controversies is longer than his political background. In July 2022, he already had to apologize for mistakenly identifying the alleged assassin of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the popular video game creator Hideo Kojima. Rieu wrote: “I naively took a joke as information. I didn’t think anyone would make a joke about someone’s murder, but it was my fault for not checking the facts before sharing them. My apologies to #HideoKojima and #MetalGear.”
Rieu previously shared a Tweet claiming the far-left was behind the murder during a campaign speech in Nara on Friday and included three photographs of Hideo Kojima. Two photographs showed Kojima with images of the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
Likewise, his controversial messages placed him in the center of the target to the point that the Muslim rapper known as SaiSai even threatened to kill him in his last video clip released in June.
“We are going to Damien’s house, go out with the tools, see you there in 20 minutes,” could be read in the letter that was denounced by Rieu himself.
The video, in which people, mostly black, appear in the video, covered with balaclavas while brandishing machetes, iron bars and bats, concludes with the following phrase: “While we are armed we do not play, we will stab you in the neck and make sauce of tomato. With my knife I will touch his heart and if he dies I will stab him again.
The debate in France is served.
2023-10-19 13:03:09
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