French court fines surgeon for trying to sell Paris attack victim's X-Ray

The surgeon, Emmanuel Masmejean, had posted the image of a young woman's forearm penetrated by a Kalashnikov bullet in the November 2015 assault.

The Bataclan concert hall, was the focus of the gun and bomb attack in which 130 people were killed.
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The Bataclan concert hall, was the focus of the gun and bomb attack in which 130 people were killed.

A Paris court has convicted a surgeon for trying to sell online an X-Ray image of a wounded arm of a woman who survived the 2015 terror attacks in the French capital.

Found guilty on Wednesday of violating medical secrecy, renowned orthopaedic surgeon Emmanuel Masmejean must pay the victim $5,200 (5,000 euros) or face two months in jail, judges ordered.

Masmejean, who works at the Georges-Pompidou hospital in western Paris, posted the image of a young woman's forearm penetrated by a Kalashnikov bullet on marketplace Opensea in late 2021.

The site allows its roughly 20 million users to trade non-fungible tokens or NFTs — certificates of ownership of an artwork that is stored on a "blockchain" similar to the technology used to secure cryptocurrencies.

In the file's description, the surgeon wrote that the young woman he had operated on had "lost her boyfriend in the attack" on the Bataclan concert hall, the focus of the November 2015 gun and bomb assault in which 130 people were killed.

The X-Ray image never sold for the asking price of $2,776, and was removed from Opensea after being revealed by the investigative website Mediapart in January.

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Professional consequences

Masmejean claimed at a September court hearing that he had been carrying out an "experiment" by putting a "striking and historic medical image" online while acknowledging that it had been "idiocy, a mistake, a blunder".

The court did not find him guilty of two further charges of abuse of personal data and illegally revealing harmful personal information.

Nor was he barred from practising as prosecutors had urged, with the lead judge saying it would be "disproportionate and inappropriate" to inflict such a "social death" on the doctor.

The victim's lawyer Elodie Abraham complained of a "politically correct" judgement.

"It doesn't bother anyone that there's been such a flagrant breach of medical secrecy. It's not a good message for doctors," Abraham said.

Neither Masmejean, who has been suspended from his hospital job nor the victim were present for Wednesday's ruling.

The surgeon may yet face professional consequences after appearing before the French medical association in September, his lawyer Ivan Terel said.

READ MORE: Sting reopens Bataclan concert hall one year after Paris massacre

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