French blogger faces trial

French political activist Christophe Grebert faces defamation charges and is to face a trial in February 2006 brought on by the city of Puteaux (a prosperous Paris suburb) says a report by Elisabeth Eaves published in the November issue of the journal Foreign Policy.

Grebert started a weblog, MonPuteaux.com, in 2002 to bring attention to the local government's alleged "waste and mismanagement" of public funds. The report said that Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud had held the mayor's position in Puteaux for more than 30 years. Grébert typically wrote about Joelle Ceccaldi-Raynaud, Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud's daughter, deputy and successor in 2004, spending allegedly over 900,000 dollars on a new public fountain. The trial itself is to cost some 33,000 dollars out of the city's budget.

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