A young French man has been fined for sending death threats to a former chief executive of Charlie Hebdo.
The 20-year-old man was found guilty of sending death threats to the magazine’s former HR director Marika Bret on Twitter.
He was sentenced to fifty days of €20 fines each by the Paris Criminal court on Wednesday, as well as a €2,500 fine “in compensation for moral damage caused”.
If he fails to pay the fine, he will automatically be imprisoned to the corresponding number of days, the court added.
The young man, who is unemployed, will also have to complete a two-day citizenship course. Prosecutors had earlier requested a six-month suspended prison sentence.
The court heard that in December last year, he had sent a threatening private message to Marika Bret on Twitter.
The defendant said he would “cut her up like a pig” and “have her eaten alive by dogs that have been starving for days,” prosecutors said.
Bret, who has been living under police protection since the 2015 attacks, described the threats as “words of unheard-of cruelty and barbarity.”
“I will never, ever accept any death threat,” she said.
The defendant had claimed that he did not know about the history of Charlie Hebdo and had copied a message “seen on a forum.”
But an investigation found that he had sent other hateful messages online, including towards the French Jewish community.
