By Antonio Torres del Cerro
Paris (EFE).- The French Prosecutor General’s Office requested on Tuesday sentences of between three and 12 months in prison for nine of the 10 cyberstalkers of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the current President of France Emmanuel Macron.
At the close of the trial, which will deliver a verdict in the coming weeks, Aurélien Poirson-Atlan received the harshest penalty: 12 months in prison and an 8,000-euro fine.
He is considered the main “instigator” of the cyberstalking of the first lady through his “Zoé Sagan” account, which had some 200,000 followers before being suspended.
Next most severe punishments were directed at art gallery owner Bertrand S. and self-proclaimed medium Delphine J. (also known as Amandine Roy, author of a viral video about Brigitte’s biological sex claiming she had been born male). They were sentenced to six months in prison, suspended, and fined 3,000 and 4,000 euros, respectively.
For the other defendants, the prosecutor’s office requested lesser sentences of six months in prison, also suspended. For one defendant, the prosecutor’s office did not request a prison sentence but rather community service.
The defense lawyers requested acquittals for their clients, invoking freedom of thought and satire. Most of the lawyers hid behind the right to parody, citing the case of Charlie Hebdo magazine, whose newsroom was the target of an attack in 2015 for publishing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.
Despite the absence of the plaintiff, Brigitte Macron (72), the two-day hearing at the Court of Paris generated enormous media and public interest. Her youngest daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, did appear.
Auzière, 41, the daughter of Brigitte’s previous marriage to André-Louis Auzière, testified on Tuesday before the court to denounce the damage that online slander has caused her mother, whose health has deteriorated.
“My mother has developed anxiety regarding her grandchildren because of what they hear about their grandmother,” she said, adding that her mother “cannot escape all the horrors spoken about her for a single second.”
One of the most persistent rumors, which began in 2021 and gained international attention in 2024, claims that the French first lady was born male and was named Jean-Michel Trogneux, who is actually Brigitte Macron’s brother.
Other malicious rumors claimed that she was a “paedophile,” alluding to the fact that she and the current president, Emmanuel Macron, met when he was a high school student and she was his drama teacher, with a 24-year age difference.
Two of the principal figures in spreading the slander were absent from the trial: Frenchman Xavier Poussard, 38, who currently lives in Milan, Italy, and conservative podcaster Candace Owens.
Poussard, a contributor to a fringe far-right and anti-Semitic magazine, investigated the rumor and contacted Owens (36) in 2024, who propagated a series titled “Becoming Brigitte” on the internet among her millions of followers.
The Macrons launched a separate legal action against Owens in the United States, suing her for “defamation.” EFE
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