France Rape Trial
Isaac Steidl founded the Coco platform, which authorities tied to criminal activity for years. The effort to hold Mr. Steidl accountable tests a new legal frontier.
Aurelien BreedenCatherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic
Reporting from Paris
Shortly after Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested by the police in France last summer and charged with failing to prevent illicit activity on the app, a French law professor specializing in cybersecurity got online messages from a man named Isaac Steidl.
“I would like to talk with you,” said an email signed by Mr. Steidl, who introduced himself as the founder of the online chat site Coco. “My case is very similar to Telegram’s, and so are the charges.”
Michel Séjean, the professor, who shared copies of the messages with The New York Times, said he didn’t know Mr. Steidl, had no interest in helping him, and never responded. He was, however, familiar with Coco — a website where anonymous users could chat without leaving records of the conversation.
French law enforcement had tied the site to thousands of criminal cases, including the recent trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men, most of whom were convicted of raping Mr. Pelicot’s now ex-wife while she was heavily sedated, and who testified that they had first met him on the chat site.
The French authorities had already closed the website in June, and the messages to Mr. Séjean suggested that Mr. Steidl was concerned that they would target him next.
Last week, they did.
Like Mr. Durov before him, Mr. Steidl was placed under investigation on a raft of criminal charges by authorities mainly using a 2023 law that has made France a testing ground for an aggressive new approach to hold the heads of online platforms personally liable.
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Source: www.nytimes.com