A court convicted France’s interior minister Brice Hortefeux on Friday for voicing a racial insult about a young man of Arab origin, prompting renewed calls for him to step down.
The Paris court fined Mr Hortefeux 750 euros and ordered him to pay 2,000 euros in damages for comments he made last September about a young activist of the ruling right-wing UMP party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The court did not hand down a criminal conviction since it judged that Mr Hortefeux had not intended the comments to be heard in public, but found him guilty of a lesser offence of racial insult.
One of Mr Hortefeux’s lawyers, Mr Nicolas Benoit, said the minister would “immediately” appeal the conviction.
“When there’s one, it’s OK. It’s when there are a lot of them that there are problems,” Mr Hortefeux, 52, said in a filmed encounter. —AFP