It’s a bizarre punishment, but two French politicians want their defamer to tweet “sorry” 466 times to atone for his rude words.

According to Le Lab [French link], Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Jean-Francois Cope filed a complaint against Fluzin Baptiste, also known as @soymalau on Twitter, for insults directed toward them.

The complaint has to do with some namecalling, from the looks of it, as well as a pretty strange subpoena that @soymalau colored with Nyancats before tweeting out.

After taking their complaint to a judge, the two politicians won an innovative conviction: in addition to a symbolic €1 in damages and €5,000 for court costs, @soymalau must tweet the following message 466 times over the next 30 days:

“J’ai gravement injurié Jean-François Copé et Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. Je le regrette et leur présente mes excuses.” (trans: I have severely insulted Jean-Francois Cope and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. I regret and apologize.)

TelecomPaper reports that for each message not sent, the offender will be fined €100 – possibly having to pay up to €46,600 if he does not comply with the court order.

And as strange as this punishment might sound, it’s not the first of its kind.

In June 2011, an activist in Malaysia was ordered to tweet an apology 100 times. He had previously tweeted incorrect information about a company that fired one of his friends, and was required to tweet that he defamed them 100 times over the course of 3 days.

(Gavel and keyboardvia Shutterstock)