Ahmet Cetin, a 23-year-old French-Turkish resident of Bourg-en-Bresse commune, stood trial on Thursday for “inciting violence and hatred,” Le Parisien reports.
“May the Turkish government give me 2000 euros and a weapon and I will do what needs to be done, anywhere in France!” he said in an Instagram video this summer.
At the bar of the court, this young married man, father of a family, who works as a maintenance agent, had great difficulty in explaining his intentions. He refutes any membership in the organization of the Gray Wolves, a Turkish ultranationalist anti-Kurdish and anti-Armenian movement.
He denies ever calling for a crackdown on the Armenian community gatherings. However, on July 24, it was he was identified and arrested at the head of a group of a hundred Turkish extremists brandishing iron bars and national flags, making with his fingers the sign of the Gray Wolves, firing mortars and ransacking shops near a gathering of the Armenian community of Decines, in the suburbs of Lyon.
Ahmet Cetin says he has only one aspiration now, “to put his life back in a normal setting, to lead a family and professional life without political or militant activity.” As proof of his good faith, he claims to have deleted all his accounts on social networks.
For the public prosecutor, however, “Ahmet Cetin denies the obvious, his messages aimed at the Armenian community” and, “inviting everyone to take part in the confrontation and the fight.” He requests a six-month suspended prison sentence and a 2,000-euro fine.
The court ruling will be released on November 5.
