Acquittal of graffiti artist Lekto by Avignon Criminal Court: No proof of anti-Semitic character

His fresco, depicting Emmanuel Macron as a puppet of a white-gloved Jacques Attali, caused a stir a year ago. The Avignon criminal court acquitted the graffiti artist Lekto this Thursday, November 23, with nothing proving “absolute certainty” its anti-Semitic character. This 32-year-old artist created this mural in June 2022 on an electrical transformer at the entrance to the city. Representing Jacques Attali, who is Jewish, as a Geppetto with a disturbing look manipulating like a puppet an Emmanuel Macron caricatured as Pinocchio, the painting took up the anti-Semitic iconography of the interwar period, according to several anti-racist associations.

While the fresco was erased 72 hours after its creation, at the initiative of the prefecture, its author was then the subject of prosecution at the initiative of the public prosecutor’s office and upon direct citation of the International League Against Racism and anti-Semitism (Licra). He had to answer for “public insult because of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion” and “provocation to discrimination because of origin, ethnicity, nation, religion”. race or religion.

During the hearing on September 14, he explained that he liked “to make fun of those who have power” and denied any anti-Semitic intention, claiming to have been unaware that Jacques Attali was Jewish. He also explained that he was inspired for his drawing by comments made by Jacques Attali himself, who claimed in 2017 to have played a key role in the takeoff of Emmanuel Macron’s political career.

SOS Racisme hopes for an appeal from the prosecution

The court acquitted him completely, even though the prosecution had requested a fine of 6,000 euros against him, including 2,000 suspended. Present at the hearing, he left the courthouse without making a statement. Noting in particular that the portrait of Jacques Attali did not reflect the usual caricatured features of anti-Semitic propaganda, the court considered that“no element […] does not allow us to state with absolute certainty that the use (by the defendant) of an image of a string puppet, the use of which goes far beyond the sole use for racist purposes, was driven by anti-Semitic sentiment.. In his motivation, the judge also states that the fresco “did not contain any call or exhortation, even implicitly formulated, to discrimination, hatred or violence” and that it also did not constitute a “public insult” within the meaning of the law.

The lawyer for SOS Racisme, one of the associations which filed a civil suit, Paul-Roger Gontard, regretted that the court did not look at “as a whole” iconographic elements. “However, the whole subject of the debate was precisely the accumulation of symbols of an insidiously anti-Semitic, insidiously racist nature”he estimated, hoping that the prosecution will appeal the judgment.

In April, another fresco by the same artist representing Emmanuel Macron, with features reminiscent of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with the number “49.3” written as a mustache, in reference to the article of the Constitution used to pass the reform of the retirements in the National Assembly, had also created controversy before being also quickly erased.