French court debates pursuing a Moroccan-French student on "antisemitism" charges after hacking into Paris-Dauphine university's intranet and replacing the profile photos of the Jewish Students' Union (UEJD) with Palestinian flags.
In a climate fraught with tension, Motawassim L. was brought before the Paris Criminal Court on 10 July.
The 22-year-old computer science student at Paris-Dauphine University is trialled for "fraudulently modifying data contained in an automated processing system" against 18 members of UEJD. The plaintiffs were all of Jewish faith.
He allegedly replaced all their photos or avatars with an image of a clenched fist superimposed on a Palestinian flag.
The incident occurred on 7 October 2024, the first anniversary of the Gaza war, and has sparked fierce intense debate in France, where tensions surrounding the Israel war on Gaza have increasingly spilt into academic spaces.
The accused was described in court as an academically gifted young man with no prior criminal record. He moved from Morocco to France at the age of 13 and currently lives with his family in Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris.
On 14 October 2024, the university president alerted the public prosecutor after the UEJD filed a complaint.
Motawassim was identified in March and brought last week to trial before Paris's 13th criminal chamber, which typically handles cybercrime cases, though rarely ones so politically charged.
He was pursuing a master's degree in computer science with ambitions of working in artificial intelligence.
Placed under judicial supervision since 5 March, the accused was expelled from the school for a month and is still subject to disciplinary action.
As there was no evidence to establish the antisemitic nature of the hack, according to investigators, the student was tried only for the offence of "fraudulent modification of data in an automated processing system".
That decision was met with outrage from the roughly 15 lawyers representing the civil parties, who argued that the attack was motivated by religion and demanded the inclusion of an aggravating circumstance: that the act was committed "based on religious affiliation."
"There was no hateful or discriminatory intent", Motawassim told the court.
"I didn't target people because of their religion. It was a political act, in the context of student protest."
He said the hack was aimed at the UEJD, which he blamed for instigating or at least tolerating disruptive behaviour during events supporting the Palestinian cause.
"There were more peaceful ways to make a point, but I refuse to be labelled antisemitic", he added.
A recent conference at Dauphine on Palestinian justice was met with threats, violence, and an unauthorised protest involving masked far-right demonstrators, including members of the UEJD, according to the Palestine committee at the university.
The protest, backed by pro-Israel public figures and relayed on national media, led to assaults, vandalism, and attempts to disrupt the event.
Organisers later called for a university investigation into the involvement of students who allegedly facilitated the violence.
Motawassim explained that he had selected the students he targeted by browsing the UEJD's Instagram followers, without verifying their religious identity.
"You can belong to an association without belonging to the religion", he said, noting that the Muslim Students' Union at Dauphine had non-Muslim members in the past.
One civil lawyer likened Motawassim to Amedy Coulibaly, the extremist responsible for the 2015 Hyper Cacher attack.
Another drew a controversial parallel between the hack and the yellow star used to identify Jews during World War II.
Throughout the three-hour hearing, Motawassim repeatedly expressed regret, calling the incident an "impulsive act" triggered by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In police custody, he had reportedly said, "I know not all Jews are Zionists."
Pressed in court to define Zionism, he replied, "It's supporting the massacre in Gaza without condemning it."
The prosecutor argued that the UEJD is composed entirely of Jewish students, making the overlap between political expression and religious identity difficult to ignore.
"This act is intolerable. It imported a foreign conflict into the university, targeted Jewish students, and was committed on 7 October, a date bound to cause particular distress."
The prosecution requested a five-month suspended sentence and that Motawassim complete a citizenship training course organised by the Shoah Memorial in Paris.
Motawassim's lawyer, for his part, urged the court not to stray beyond the original charge, arguing that adding the aggravating circumstance at this stage would render the judgment legally questionable.
"There was no importation of the conflict by my client, don't do it yourselves," he told the court.
He warned against "compensating for the trauma of the 7 October attacks through this verdict," which is expected on 15 September.
Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, pro-Palestine students and unions in France have faced increasing repression and censorship.
Student encampments protesting the genocide in Gaza, at Sciences Po, the Sorbonne, and other French universities, have been violently dismantled by police.
Instead of engaging with their demands, right-wing and centrist politicians, who control the government, dismissed the protests as a symptom of "Islamo-leftism" – a term long used by these political camps to smear the left as enablers of radical Islam.