Background

In Allouche v France [2024] ECHR 305 [in French], Ms Allouche met B, a bartender, in a café near her workplace, an association working to remember the victims of the Holocaust. They evidently struck up some kind of rapport, but after she declined B’s invitations to a date he sent her 26 e-mails expressing his disappointment and containing insults, threats of violence, rape and death, some accompanied by antisemitic remarks. His last e-mail included a photograph of Hitler [4-6].

She filed a complaint about the death threats and antisemitic insults. The police drew up an initial report accusing B of having committed a “public insult against a private person because of her race, religion or origin”, as well as “repeated death threats” [7]. The public prosecutor asked the police to “reclassify part of the facts as a non-public insult due to race, ethnicity or religion (criminal acts)”. On the following day, the duty public prosecutor at the Paris High Court asked the police to “reclassify the facts as racially aggravated death threats” [8]. Continue reading →