Paris, January 8, 2016 (AFP) – The Constitutional Council validated the law against contesting crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War, in a decision published Friday on its website.

Receives a priority issue of constitutionality (QPC) of revisionist Vincent Reynouard, who felt that the law entailed unjustified discrimination between the victims and an attack on freedom of expression and opinion, the Constitutional Council rejected these two complaints. Introduced by the Gayssot Act of 13 July 1990, Article 24 bis of the Press Act refers to crimes against humanity as defined by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and to the Holocaust.

The Constitutional Council considers firstly that “the negation of acts defined as crimes against humanity by a decision of a French or international jurisdiction recognized by France” as provided by Article 24a “differs from the negation of crimes against humanity acts defined by another court or the law. “

“On the other hand, the denial of crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War, in part on national territory, has by itself a racist and antisemitic scope,” said the ruling. Thereby writing the law, “the legislator treated differently for the actions of a different nature” and “this difference in treatment is related to the object” of the Gayssot Act, “which aims to repress racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic” .

In terms of freedom of expression, the Constitutional Council noted that the law was intended to “fight against certain particularly serious manifestations of anti-Semitism and racial hatred.” He emphasized that “only the negation, implicit or explicit, or the lower bound of these outrageous crimes is prohibited and that the impugned provisions have neither the purpose nor the effect of prohibiting the historical debate.”

The Gayssot Act is criticized by Holocaust deniers, but not only. Some wish that it be extended. Under current law, an apology for the slave trade and the denial of the Armenian Genocide are not sanctioned, but are recognized by France as crimes against humanity.

In the coming months are planned before the Paris court trials of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and former honorary president of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the latter for having reiterated his statements on the gas chambers , “detail” in his History of the Second World War.