$ 150 million claimed from American conspirator Alex Jones for denying a school shooting

"We're here to make sure Alex Jones and his company pay for the outright lies they told," said Kyle Farrar, attorney for Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, after a 10-day trial in a Texas court.

$ 150 million claimed from American conspirator Alex Jones for denying a school shooting

"We're here to make sure Alex Jones and his company pay for the outright lies they told," said Kyle Farrar, attorney for Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, after a 10-day trial in a Texas court.

The couple lost their six-year-old son when a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut in 2012, killing 20 children and six adults.

Alex Jones, a well-known figure on the far right and follower of conspiracy theories, had claimed on his Infowars site that the massacre was only a staging piloted by opponents of firearms.

According to the parents, his lies had energized his audiences, allowing him to pocket millions of dollars, while they became the target of harassment campaigns.

Several families had sued him for compensation.

He had finally publicly admitted the reality of the killing, while refusing to cooperate with the courts.

Judges in Texas and Connecticut had therefore condemned him by default to pay damages to the plaintiffs, while leaving it to jurors to set their amount.

The first of two trials, which stemmed from the complaint of Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, gave rise to a final battle between the parties on Wednesday in Austin.

The couple were "victims of a continuous campaign of defamation, year after year, and suffered emotional stress", which aggravated their pain, pleaded their lawyer, accusing Alex Jones "of having taken advantage of their suffering ".

Alex Jones' lawyer questioned the link between his client's remarks and the harm suffered by the plaintiffs. “His platform wasn't that big,” “he wasn't The New York Times but a little talk show in Austin,” Andino Reynal said.

Just before this exchange, Alex Jones, called on the witness stand, again acknowledged that the massacre was "100% real".

But another lawyer, Mark Bankston, questioned his good faith, showing excerpts from his show, recorded last week, in which he said that the jurors had been chosen from among people "who do not know on which planet they live".

The jury will begin its deliberations Thursday morning.