The reasons given by the president of the Assize Court and the attorney general this Monday morning to justify the closed session are numerous. The accused, Rohan Rane, is on trial for hosting a masculinist chat group where young girls, most of them minors, were forced to engage in online sexual acts and mutilate themselves. The magistrate first considered that publicizing the debates would be âdangerous for moralsâ due to the planned broadcast of videos of scenes of torture and humiliation of victims during the debates.
âThese are young girls aged 13-14 who suffered extremely serious abuse. It is not a question of saying that justice must remain confined within these walls, but it is in their personal interest,â argued the attorney general. Added to this is a request coming directly from the United States, with the FBI initiating the investigations. The case was triggered by a report from an American child protection organization which discovered images on the web of a 12-year-old child with her bare torso, whom an interlocutor encouraged to scarify herself by engraving the name âRohanâ on her body.
The nuisance capacity of this 29-year-old Indian who came to settle in France for his studies seems to extend beyond the dock: his associates, particularly active in the United States, âhave already sought to intimidate victims and witnessesâ and threatened American prosecutors in charge of proceedings across the Atlantic, according to the judgment read by the president. âI think that the fears expressed by the American authorities weighed heavily in the decision to go completely behind closed doors,â confirms Me Marquetty. The Advocate General also recommended not to weaken the âabsolutely exemplary cooperation with the United Statesâ by defying their request for closed doors.
A file with âpedagogical issuesâ
The lawyers of the civil parties nevertheless defended the necessary publicity of the debates because, according to Me Hippolyte Marquetty, the Rohan Rane case is âparticular. He is a pioneer in this type of behavior.â Exposing the discussions which will animate the trial could have âeducational virtues for societyâ, believes the criminal lawyer. And added: âMost victims want to make it knownâ what they experienced to warn of the dangers of criminal groups operating on the Internet. Five civil parties, all American, have been formed to date, but in reality there are many more, from the United States to the Netherlands, including Great Britain and Estonia.
They fell into the clutches of this group of young men, German, New Zealand, American, steeped in racism and anti-Semitism, Nazi aesthetics, ultra-conservative values, hatred against feminists and the LGBT+ community. Rohan Rane is portrayed as their ringleader and the âmain ordererâ in the videos. âThe facts concerned by this affair, still too little known to the general public, deserve media attention in order to raise awareness of the digital risks in terms of sexual exploitation of children,â Anna Rodriguez, of the Ecpat association, told Le Figaro. Pronouncing the closed session âalso means reinforcing the weight and pressure capacity of this online movement,â she considers.
Despite these arguments, the decision was therefore made to remove the public and the press from the room for the duration of the trial. âWe are disappointed with this choice in view of the responsibility of the accused in the emergence of violent nihilistic extremism, but also of the Discord platform in the dissemination of content and of the servers that we would have liked to be able to make more visible,â concludes the Ecpat spokesperson. Tried in particular for torture or barbaric acts against minors, extortion by an organized gang or even the distribution of child pornography, Rohan Rane faces life imprisonment. The verdict is expected this Friday.
