Overview

• President Emmanuel Macron vowed to keep pressing for universal abolition of the death penalty, framing Badinter’s legacy as a call to defend the rule of law and combat antisemitism.
• In the morning, Badinter’s tomb in Bagneux was defaced with hostile inscriptions targeting his fights against capital punishment and for decriminalising homosexuality.
• Police secured the cemetery, municipal crews removed the graffiti, and prosecutors in Nanterre opened a profanation inquiry entrusted to the Hauts-de-Seine territorial security.
• Badinter was symbolically installed through a cenotaph containing his advocate’s robe, a copy of his 1981 abolition speech, and three books chosen by Élisabeth Badinter, while his remains remain in Bagneux.
• The ceremony featured readings and music, including Julien Clerc and Guillaume Gallienne, and placed the coffin in the ‘revolutionaries of 1789’ vault with Condorcet, the Abbé Grégoire and Gaspard Monge, as leaders across parties condemned the desecration.