Armand Clesse: Hunting opponent symbolically convicted

Political scientist and animal rights activist Armand Clesse (70) must pay one euro each in damages to two hobby hunters in Luxembourg who had taken him to court for defamation. This is in addition to a small fine.

The trial brought by two hobby hunters against an animal rights activist ended on Friday at first instance with a fine of 100 euros.

The former university professor and animal rights advocate Armand Clesse had, on 23 February 2019, in a RTL radio broadcast sharply criticised the hobby hunters and hunting: hobby hunters were barbaric and hunting was premeditated murder.

Two hobby hunters, Marc Glesener and Jean-Claude Hosch, considered themselves defamed and insulted by being portrayed as murderers – and therefore filed a private lawsuit. In it, they demanded Clesse's criminal conviction as well as damages of 2,500 euros each.

One euro each in damages

The criminal chamber of the Diekirch District Court only partially granted this on Friday. The judges convicted Armand Clesse of defamation and imposed a fine of 100 euros. In addition, Clesse must pay Hosch and Glesener damages of one euro each – and a total of 500 euros in court costs.

Although the first-instance judgment has yet to be published, the sentence suggests that the judges considered the offence of defamation to have been proven, but assessed the degree of culpability and the harm caused as extremely minor. 

At the end of the trial, Armand Clesse and his lawyer Me Daniel Baulisch announced that they would be filing an appeal. “I am 70 years old. For the rest of my life, I will stand up for animals. The seventy-year-old, who described himself during the trial as the “lawyer for animals who have no voice,” has set himself the goal of taking the case all the way to Strasbourg. He intends to continue referring to hobby hunters as «animal killers». In the hope that one day an ethical revolution will take place and we will adopt a different attitude towards animals. He very much hopes to be able to take this trial — one he never sought, but which he sees as a landmark case for freedom of opinion and expression — all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.