Rapper to stand trial in France for defaming police

PARIS, July 11 (Reuters) A French appeals court today ordered a rapper to be retried for accusing police of brutality in France's poor and ethnically diverse suburbs.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy had initiated the case against rapper Mohammed Bourokba, better known as ''Hame'' from the group La Rumeur, during his time as interior minister, saying the musician had defamed a public body in 2002.

In a leaflet accompanying a disc in April 2002, Hame said: ''The reports of the interior ministry will never mention the hundreds of our brothers killed by police forces without the assassins having been troubled.'' ''The reality is that living in our neighbourhood is living with regular humiliation through police,'' he said in the text.

The simmering tensions between police and youths in France's high-rise suburban estates have been a sensitive issue since youngsters angry about discrimination burned thousands of cars in weeks-long riots in 2005.

Sarkozy, the interior minister at the time, earned criticism and praise for his tough stance to curb the violence.

Hame was cleared on a first hearing in 2004, a judgement that was upheld by a Paris appeals court last year.

The court said the rapper had not blamed the police for any specific crime and had just stated his general opinion on the role of political and state officials in France's run-down suburbs over the past 20 years.

But France's Cour de Cassation appeals court said today that blaming hundreds of murders on police constituted a case of public defamation.

The trial over the case, which also targets the chairman of EMI Music France, Emmanuel de Buretel de Chassey, is set to start early next year.

Several French rappers have stood trial in France over their controversial texts before, but courts have almost always refrained from condemning them, citing freedom of expression.

REUTERS SBC RK2200