Six people have been taken into custody in the investigation into the death threats made against the French 17-year-old Mila after she released a video critical of Islam in November.
Due to the fallout from the video, Mila was forced into hiding after receiving 50,000 death threats. She now remains under permanent police protection and cannot attend school. Despite the challenges she faces, she still maintains an active online presence, posting videos and content that have drawn the wrath of her critics, including Twitter itself, which temporarily suspended her account this month.
Authorities have only tracked down a small fraction of the number of people who have threatened Mila. The six people taken into custody — five men, and a woman — all aged 18 to 35, were arrested in Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Gironde, Haute-Savoie, Bas-Rhin and Bouches- du-Rhône, as part of the investigations carried out by the national center for the fight against online hatred, recently created within the Paris prosecutor’s office.
They were taken into custody for “online moral harassment” and five of them also for “death threats”, while the sixth was arrested for “threats of crime”.
Five people had already been arrested in February and are due to be tried in June by the Paris Criminal Court.
Death threats with references to Samuel Paty
Mila had provoked violent responses, sometimes accompanied by death threats, for publishing a video on the social network TikTok in November in which she sharply attacked her detractors. She has since published other videos that have led to further death threats, including topics related to immigration, religion, and feminism.
The teenager had shared on Twitter screenshots of the death threats received, some referring to the beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020 in the area of Yvelines.
The prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation in mid-November, relinquished jurisdiction in early December in favor of the national center for the fight against online hatred.
