Ex-Muslim in Paris gives the Mayor a piece of his mind

This is quite a clip and has a couple of cultural references that need adding. First, the man on a rant, Farid Smahi, who was hauled away from Anne Hidalgo yesterday as she left the Marks & Spencer store where terrorist Karim Cheurfi was gunned down by police, referenced the most famous case of malpractice of French jurisprudence.

From the translator, Ava-Lon:

Farid is using the expression J’accuse which entered in the French language about 120 years ago during the cause of Dreyfus.

Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the French army who was tried for treason (in favor of Germans, who France was fighting at that moment) in 1894 in an atmosphere of prejudice and where evidence against him was fabricated.

“J’accuse” was an open letter of French writer Emile Zola, published in January 1898,concerning the case of Dreyfus, where Zola was accusing French government of antisemitism, bias, and unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus. For that letter Zola was himself prosecuted for libel and found guilty in February 1898. He had to exile himself to England to avoid imprisonment. He returned to France the following year and continued his defense of Dreyfus, who was retired the same year, found guilty again, but was pardoned (all seems to point to the government trying to save face).

Only in 1906, on appeal, Dreyfus obtain annulment of his guilty verdict and even awarded the Legion d’honneur the highest French media (with mention “for a soldier who has endured an unparalleled martyrdom”).

The expression “J’accuse” since became the call of everyone who is fighting greater power. Even if Farid wasn’t aware of the exact case he sure used the expression well.