A new Axis in the making : French jihadist Nemmouche to be defended by Far Right Belgian lawyers.
Mehdi Nemmouche, the French jihadist involved in the Jewish Museum massacre in Brussels on May 24, who was extradited to Belgium, will be defended by Far Right lawyers. According to ResistanceS.be, a Belgian antiracist website, Henri Laquay and Sebastien Courtoy, Nemmouche’s Belgian lawyers, were photographed performing the quenelle (the inverted Nazi salute) along with Dieudonné Mbala Mbala, the antisemitic French-Cameroonese agitator in 2012.
In an interview with Le Soir, a mainstream Belgian newspaper, Lequay rationalized that there was nothing « nazi » about the quenelle : « It is merely giving the finger to the System, in a peaceful and humoristic way ». « The System » used to be a codeword in national-socialist Germany for the allegedly « Jewish » Weimar Republic. It is in use again in Far Right political groups all over Europe to describe Western democracy, Nato and the EU.
Henri Laquay’s father, who wore the same first and last names and was a lawyer too, was a Far Right politician in the 1990’s and a legal advisor to the Belgian National Front. Laquay Jr himself ran as a Belgian National Front candidate in 1999. He is the founder of Jus et Patria, a international association of « nationalist » lawyers, along with the French Far Right and Catholic fundamentalist lawyer, Wallerand de Saint-Just d’Autingues, a counsel of Jean-Marie Le Pen and a defensor of Serbian war criminals.
As for Sebastien Courtoy, he was not directly involved in politics but was on repeated occasions the defensor of Far Right politicians in Belgium : including Laurent Louis who was tried for slandering several public personalities. A one time member of the conservative People’s Party, Louis later on embraced antisemitism, befriended Mbala Mbala and even joined a Belgian islamist party.
Both Laquay and Courtoy have defended islamist organizations or Far Right militants involved in slander or abuse against Jewish or Israeli organizations or individuals, or people involved in terrorist activities or training in Somalia and Syria.
© Michel Gurfinkiel & The Jewish Chronicle, 2014