Controversial comedian Dieudonné filed an appeal on Thursday with the Paris administrative court against the police prefect’s ban on his show at the Zénith on September 14, his lawyer said, confirming information from Libération.
Already refused in several cities, the show was banned on Wednesday due to “risk of serious disturbances to public order” in view of its repeated anti-Semitic remarks. This Parisian ban comes in addition to those taken during the summer in Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier and Toulouse, where the comedian repeatedly convicted of racial insults and incitement to hatred was to present his new show La Cage aux fous, with antivax singer Francis Lalanne. His lawyer, Me Emmanuel Ludot, indicated that he had filed two summary proceedings against this ban on Thursday, one concerning Dieudonné and the other Francis Lalanne. The administrative court told AFP that a hearing was set for Friday at 4 p.m.
“I especially criticize the lack of characterization of the disturbance to public order and the disproportionate nature,” declared the lawyer. “The bans that have rained on without ceasing actually amount to putting in place a generalized and perpetual ban against Dieudonné. It’s no longer the texts that are the problem, now it’s the man,” he said. He spoke of a “very atypical situation”, explaining that he had “submitted” the text of the show to the prefect of police this summer, proposed to amend it, to bring in a “commissioner of justice” then to “postpone the date” a spectacle. Concerning Francis Lalanne, “the decree does not provide for any prohibition”, it is therefore “unenforceable”, maintains the lawyer.
At the beginning of August, the prefect of police Laurent Nuñez had warned Dieudonné of this possibility of ban due in particular to “risk of serious disturbances to public order”, which he reiterated in the decree motivating his decision. Several exchanges took place between the police headquarters and the polemicist’s lawyer. In his banning order, Laurent Nuñez noted that it was “public knowledge that the content of Dieudonné’s previous shows” “advocated discrimination, persecution and exterminations perpetrated during the Second World War” . He further considered that the “elements put forward by the lawyer” of the comedian were “not likely to prevent the making of comments that undermine human dignity during the show and thus did not provide any sufficient guarantees regarding the absence of disturbances to public order.
The prefect of police also noted that this show was to take place the day before the celebration of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana and “near a synagogue”.