Threatening Imam Iquioussen’s lawyer is attacking the rule of law

“Dirty bougnoule whore, if we see you again in court to defend it, we’ll rape you and we’ll go through all your holes.” The one to whom such a promise is made is one of our colleagues, targeted by an odious outpouring of hatred, insults, threats of rape and death for having been wrong to ensure, brilliantly, the defense interests of Mr. Hassan Iquioussen.

Work for a common justice

Hate, vulgar and cowardly, thrown in the face of a lawyer who has simply done her job. A job that we caricature, that we insult, that we dirty. To reproach a lawyer for defending a man, whatever he has done, is to deny him any nuance, any distance, with the person he is defending. To reproach a woman for this is, moreover, to deny any professional dimension to her commitment, it is to deny her all objectivity by thinking, as stupidly as indecently, that she can only defend because of a supposed attraction towards his client. “We will find you and you will be judged by the people’s court.” Hate, again, thrown in the face of a magistrate this time for having, with her colleagues, simply rendered justice.

To defend is to contradict, to oppose, to assist, to support, to support a man whom vindictiveness accuses, drooling at the lips, of all evils. To judge is to decide, in complete independence and in the privacy of one’s conscience, in the light of a law that makes up society, whether or not a man deserves to be condemned, sanctioned, expelled. To defend, to judge, is to work, each on his own scale and in respect of his prerogatives, for the functioning of a common justice.

Justice must remain free

To threaten a lawyer, to threaten a magistrate, is above all to threaten the rule of law, it is basically to say of justice that it does not exist or more exactly that one can do without it. To threaten a lawyer, to threaten a magistrate, is also to tell justice that it is nothing but an obstacle between the accused and the public punishment that, after all, he deserves. To attack these two functions is basically to say that they are not legitimate. To attack those who embody them is also to attack the auxiliaries of a justice despised by those who should, on the contrary, always protect it. Because if our colleague is not the first lawyer to be the subject of threats (although their deeply sexist and racist character, just like their expression, are symptomatic of our time), it is clear that this hatred, often silent , has made itself heard here because the way has been opened to it.

Justice cannot be rendered on Twitter, just as it cannot be instrumentalized by ministers who want it to serve their political ambitions, or as a relay for the signals they want to emit. It must remain free, independent and preserved from a cynical, crude, outrageous media game. To seek to extort decisions from her, to threaten her actors, is not only to make the bed of those who want to kill her, but also that of those who believe her to be under orders and who, therefore, no longer expect anything from her. Threatened, outraged, justice, allegedly blind, must not remain silent.

Among the 350 signatories: Roman Ruiz, lawyer at the Paris staff, Nino Arnaud, lawyer at the bar of Marseilles, Jacqueline Laffont, lawyer at the Paris Bar, Florence Nikolic, magistrate, Claire Dujardin, lawyer at the Toulouse Bar and President of the SAF, Vincent Brenghart, lawyer at the Paris staff, Corinne Dreyfus-Shmidt, lawyer at the Paris Bar, Olivia Ronen, lawyer at the Paris Bar, Maya Lino, lawyer at the bar of Seine-Saint-Denis, Raphael Kempflawyer at the Paris staff, William Bourdon, lawyer at the Paris staff, Nathalie Rubio, magistrate, Pascale Taelman, lawyer at the bar of Val-de-Marne and former president of Val-de-Marne, Stephane Maugendre, lawyer at the bar of Seine-Saint-Denis, Elise Arfi, lawyer at the Paris Bar and member of the Council of the Order, Mary Assoo, clerk, Heloise Cabot, lawyer at the Paris Bar…