“We will have your skin”, “Let us hang this son of a dog”, “It will end badly for you”: eleven people tried for cyberharassment against the ex-boss of OM

Jacques-Henri Eyraud, ancien patron de l’OM de 2016 à 2021. MAXPPP – GEORGES ROBERT

Le président Jacques-Henri Eyraud, ex-président de l’Olympique Marseille, avait porté plainte pour menaces de mort.

The trial of eleven OM supporters prosecuted for aggravated cyberharassment and death threats against the former president of the Marseille club, Jacques-Henri Eyraud, opened Monday before the Paris judicial court. "We'll have your skin", "Let's hang this son of a dog& quot;, "This is going to end badly for you"…

These are serious words. Let's not trivialize them

These are some of the messages targeting Mr. Eyraud, 56 years old, and posted on Twitter (now X) between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 by the eleven defendants, aged 25 to 52. "These are serious comments. Let's not trivialize them", said at the bar Me Olivier Baratelli, lawyer for the former president of Olympique de Marseille, present at the hearing unlike several defendants.

In addition to the threatening messages, caricatures showing Mr. Eyraud beheaded or his body under a guillotine were also posted on Twitter.

A hundred people had posted hateful messages

In total, around a hundred people had posted hateful messages but only eleven of them could be identified. The facts prosecuted took place on the sidelines of the serious incidents that occurred on January 30, 2021, when several hundred OM supporters, unhappy with the management of the club, attacked violently at the Commanderie, the OM training center.

Twelve young people were sentenced in February 2021 to prison terms in connection with this case by the Marseille criminal court. Four others, considered to be leaders of supporter groups involved in the incidents, were also sentenced in Marseille in March 2021.

A few weeks after the incidents at the Commanderie, Mr. Eyraud, at the head of the Marseille club since October 2016, was replaced by Pablo Longoria. The trial is scheduled until Tuesday.