Earlier this month, 79-year-old caricaturist Siné suggested in the weekly Charlie Hebdo magazine that 21-year-old Jean Sarkozy, who became engaged with Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of a family which owns the Darty group, the largest consumer electronics chain in France, intended to convert to Judaism before the marriage.  

 

The caricaturist suggested also that the President’s son was “an opportunist who would go far in life."

 

In the Charlie Hebdo column, which took the form of a "talking" cartoon in the cartoonist's own hand-writing, Siné wrote: "Jean Sarkozy, worthy son of his father and already a UMP councillor, emerged almost to applause after his court case for not stopping after an accident on his scooter." 

 

"The prosecutor even asked for him to be cleared. You have to remember that the plaintiff was an Arab. And that's not all. He has just said that he wants to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, who is Jewish, and heir of the founders of Darty. He will go far in life, this boy!"

 

Jean Sarkozy had appeared in court last month, accused of running his scooter into the back of a car and driving away without giving his name.

 

The Sarkozy and Darty families threatened to sue the magazine for anti-Semitism.

 

Philippe Val, the magazine’s director, who criticised the cartoon/column as "peddling a falsehood," asked the cartoonist to retract. He reportedly replied:"I would rather cut off my balls."

 

Siné was then fired by Val on the ground that the column had "anti-semitic undertones"

and could be interpreted as making a link between conversion to Judaism and social success.

 

“This is neither acceptable nor defendable before a court,” Val stressed.

 

The International League Against Racism and Anti-semitism (LICRA) as well as CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish Organizations, expressed their support to the  director decision.

 

Culture Minister Christine Albanel declared that the caricaturist’s cartoon and remarks "echoed clichés and cartoons from another time that one would like to see disappear once for all.”

 

The cartoonist brought a legal action for defamation against Charlie Hebdo and, "anyone else who suggests that I am an anti-Semite and a shit.”

 

The staff and contributors of the magazine appeared to be split between those who support the editor, Philippe Val, and those who accuse him of selling out to the "Sarkozy clan."

 

Jean Sarkozy is the son of President Sarkozy and his Corsican-born first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli. He has an older brother, Pierre, 23.