A French court on Thursday ruled against withdrawing the picture magazine Paris Match from newsstands for publishing gruesome photographs of the terror attack a year ago that killed 86 people in Nice — but forbid two pictures of it from being published again, including on the Internet.
The ruling came after Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins sought an urgent hearing a day before France celebrates Bastille Day, its national holiday.
Special commemorations were planned yesterday in Nice, to be attended by French President Emmanuelle Macron.
Victims’ organizations had denounced the photographs depicting scenes — screen grabs from video surveillance film — of the carnage on a main beachside walkway on July 14 last year, when a truck barreled into celebrating crowds.
In its ruling, the court said that victims, dead or fleeing death, were identifiable by their clothing and the images capturing the truck as it moved down the Promenade des Anglais provided “nothing new to the public’s right to legitimate information about the events,” according to a portion of the decision tweeted by a lawyer for a victims’ group.
The decision forbid two photographs from being republished anywhere, including on the Internet — with a huge hourly fine if ignored, according to the lawyer for Fenvac, the leading association for victims.
“It’s a very good decision,” lawyer Eric Morain said, despite the court decision not to order the withdrawal of the Paris Match issue that went on sale on Thursday — a move that would have been extremely rare.
Morain said it was a “pragmatic” move because the popular magazine was already on sale at the newsstands.
Paris Match executive director Olivier Royant had said he would defend “tooth and nail” what he said was “the right of citizens, first among them the victims, to know exactly what happened” on the day of the fatal attack.
He said the report, with photographs, was a way for his publication “to pay homage to the victims ... so that society does not forget,” adding that the right of the media to inform is a foundation of democracy.
However, Fenvac head Stephan Gicquel said on BFM-TV ahead of the ruling that “we don’t need these shock pictures to understand the horror of terrorism.”
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