This report on Sunday on a combustible subject in the middle of the presidential campaign had provoked strong reactions on social networks and continuous news channels, causing the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, to react at the National Assembly.
At the same time, Ophélie Meunier and a young native of the city, Amine Elbahi, a witness on the show, received threats, forcing the authorities to place them under the protection of the SDLP, according to a police source.
“I have given instructions that each time a journalist is the subject of serious threats, he benefits from police protection”, reacted Gérald Darmanin on Saturday on Twitter.
Asked by AFP, M6 said it would make “no comment for the moment”.
“What I said is disturbing. I must have aimed correctly in view of the threats,” Amine Elbahi told AFP.
The young man recounts in the report having alerted the northern prefecture at the end of 2020 to an association in the city, “Ambitions and initiatives for success” (AAIR).
He suspected her of providing “Koranic lessons” under the guise of tutoring, benefiting from public subsidies, in particular municipal ones. In the background, suspicions of clientelism against the DVD mayor, Guillaume Delbar.
“Outpouring of Hatred”
The young man filed a complaint on Friday after receiving numerous threats on social networks, by SMS or on WhatsApp, as well as voice recordings “noted by bailiff”, according to his lawyer, Me Jean Tamalet.
Mr. Elbahi is notably described as a “kouffar” (unbeliever in Arabic, editor’s note) and “he is told that he is going to be beheaded”, specifies the lawyer to AFP.
Claiming to be the victim of a “surge of hatred and threats”, Mayor Guillaume Delbar announced his intention to file a complaint too.
Mr. Elbahi’s alert led to an investigation by the prefecture, which explains that it found that “Arabic lessons of a religious nature” were actually given, then made a report to the prosecution.
Mr. Delbar, as well as three members of the association are summoned to the Lille Criminal Court on Tuesday, the first for embezzlement “by negligence”, the others for “breach of trust”. A date set well before the broadcast of the report.
However, this trial could be postponed: two lawyers have asked for time to study the case. And Guillaume Delbar, as well as his advice, were positive for Covid at the end of the week.
“I could have been wrong”
“I may have been deceived, I could have been mistaken” by supporting “an association which had just split with a mosque that had become Salafist”, said the city councilor this week.
Mr. Delbar has just been given a six-month suspended prison sentence and two years of ineligibility for his participation in a fraudulent system of tax exemption via micro-parties. He appealed.
Contacted by AFP, the Nord prefecture refused to specify the amounts paid by the State to the association since 2016, for which it is requesting reimbursement.
The municipality indicated that the AAIR was to benefit in 2020 from 64,640 euros in subsidies, but that the money had never been paid.
“When I read in the press that it is + a proselytizing association +, it twists my stomach,” said AFP Me Muriel Cuadrado, who defends the secretary of the association.
The AAIR “took kids to the patent, to the bac”, all with “prices for a modest population” in “the poorest city in France”, she pleaded.
Lawyers for the other defendants declined to comment.
Mr. Elbahi had previously made himself known for his fight to repatriate his two nephews aged 4 and 6, detained in a Syrian camp. His sister, mother of two children, had left to join the Islamic State organization and is, according to him, being held in a Kurdish prison.