The affair arising from the racist insults of Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla has just reached a milestone. His lawyer, Guillermo Duarte Cacavelos, announced want to extradite Kylian Mbappé towards Paraguay. The reason invoked : defamation. The captain of the Blues responded publicly to the elected official's comments after the French victory, denouncing racism “ contemptible ».
According to the lawyer, since defamation is also punishable in France, a procedure would make it possible to force Mbappé à appear before Paraguayan justice. The demonstration is spectacular. It is above all false.
French law is unambiguous. Article 696-4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure prohibits the extradition of a French national. Mbappé is French. The threat stops there, on paper as in fact.
The rest of the decor doesn't help the senator’s cause. The Paraguayan government distanced itself from Celeste Amarilla and presented her with his apologies to France. For its part, the French Federation contacted the public prosecutor, who opened proceedings. In other words: the chosen one is abandoned by her own country, and it is her, from now on, that French justice is looking at.
One question remains, the one that this sequence poses without ever naming it. How do racist comments targeting a black player turn, in a few days, into an attempt at legal intimidation against the victim? The lawyer's response had no legal chance. It had another function: to make noise. She did it.
