فاس نيوز ميديا جريدة الكترونية جهوية تعنى بشؤون و أخبار جهة فاس مكناس – متجددة على مدار الساعة
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Thursday that it has dismissed the complaint filed by the Algerian state against European MP Sarah Knafo (Reconquest party) for “spreading false news”. This decision came after Knafo’s statements claiming that Algeria receives 800 million euros annually in development aid from France.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office explained that Knafo “stated that France gives Algeria 800 million euros annually, while the complaint indicates that this amount is over a period of five years”. The prosecutor concluded that “this is more a case of insufficiently verified and rather imprecise information, rather than deliberately false”.
The complaint was dismissed on September 27, two days after it was filed, “on the grounds that the offense is not substantiated”, according to the prosecutor’s statement to AFP. Algeria had objected to the statements made by Sarah Knafo, representative of Eric Zemmour’s far-right Reconquest party in the European Parliament, which she made on RMC radio on September 20, saying: “Do you know, for example, that we give Algeria 800 million euros in public development aid?”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office emphasized that the offense of “spreading false news” requires proving two elements: “the false nature of the information, as well as causing or risking to cause a disturbance of public peace.” Regarding the first point, “bad faith is not presumed as in defamation cases, and cannot be considered even when the information has not been sufficiently verified.”
As for the second point, the prosecutor’s office considered that the message of this elected official, “which was disseminated in the context of a public debate on development aid to foreign countries in light of the national budget deficit before the Finance Act is to be discussed”, did not “obviously” cause “disorder, panic, collective emotion, or confusion”.
