French footballer Karim Benzema has filed a defamation suit against the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, after the minister said he had “notorious” links with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The legal challenge, seen by AFP, accused the minister of using the player to score political points, noting that Benzema “has never had the slightest link with the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, nor to [his] knowledge with anyone who claims to be a member of it”.
The minister began targeting Benzema, 36, in mid-October, after the former Real Madrid player expressed his solidarity with the people of Gaza on social media. “Our prayers to the people of Gaza, victims once again of unjust bombardments that spare neither women nor children,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Darmanin, seen as a hardliner within his party, told a French conservative broadcaster: “Benzema is notoriously linked with the Muslim Brotherhood, we all know it.” He offered no evidence to back up his claims.
Days later, after Benzema had denied the allegations and threatened legal reprisals, Darmanin fended off calls in an interview with BFMTV to provide proof.
He instead cited the fact that the player had not tweeted in support of the Israelis killed in Hamas’s 7 October attacks, or the French teacher stabbed to death by an Islamist former pupil in Arras, describing his interviewers as being naive.
The legal challenge, which was filed on Tuesday, said the minister’s remarks “undermine” the player’s honour and reputation. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement that has been banned in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and several other Middle Eastern countries.
In the 92-page complaint, Benzema, a practising Muslim who now plays for the Al-Ittihad club in Saudi Arabia and who has previously won the Ballon d’Or, added: “I am aware of the extent to which, because of my notoriety, I am being used in political games, which are all the more scandalous given that the dramatic events since 7 October deserve something quite different from this type of statement.”
Benzema’s lawyer, Hugues Vigier, described the minister’s words as out of line. “It’s the exact opposite of what a man who calls himself a politician should be working towards,” he told the French broadcaster RTL.
He added that Darmanin’s comments were “sowing division in France, with lots of people who don’t understand this kind of talk, some who exclude Karim Benzema and some who feel excluded by what is being said about him”.
