A French court has convicted six people over harassment and death threats sent to a French teenager who was inundated with threats after posting a video critical of Islam on social media in 2020.
The six people convicted were handed sentences from between suspended sentences of three months to prison terms of four months and will be monitored with electronic ankle bracelets.
Of the six, one of those convicted, charged with uttering death threats to the teen, is a mother of two who already had prior convictions for theft, fraud and driving a vehicle without a license, Franceinfo reports.
French teen Mila had been inundated with threats of violence after posting a video critical of Islam in January of 2020, in what became known as the Mila Affair, in which she stated on Instagram, “I hate religion. The Quran is… full of hate. There is only hate in it. Islam is a shit religion. That’s what I think.”
The level of threats against the teen, who was 16 at the time, became so great that she was forced to stop going to school and went into hiding under police protection.
“Considering the threats I received from people in my high school, I could have been burned with acid, hit. I was threatened with being stripped naked in public, of being buried alive. I had to drop out of high school,” Mila said in 2020.
This week’s convictions come after eleven others were convicted for cyberbullying Mila in June of last year and received sentences of between four to six months in prison suspended.
Richard Malka, the lawyer for Mila, commented on the abuse and threats suffered by the teen saying, “Never in the history of this country has a young girl received 100,000 hateful messages, obviously with a sexist, homophobic connotation.”
“This is the first time in the history of this country that a young woman of this age has been subject to 24-hour police protection. It didn’t exist. Can you imagine the loneliness that this induces?” Malka added.
This week, Malka commented on the new round of convictions, stating, “The conviction of the six people prosecuted was necessary,” and added, “only a few words on a social network can have serious consequences for the perpetrators of these words of hatred and violence.”
“I have no satisfaction in seeing these young people condemned. My only satisfaction, in this case, would be that Mila can return to a normal life… and it is not,” Malka said. Mila remains under police protection.
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