A Brussels criminal court sentenced two employees of the Belgian Islamic Centre to 10 months jail on Wednesday. They were convicted for inciting race hatred against Jews by spreading revisionist and xenophobic texts via the centre's website.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said the sentence was “memorable”.
Abdel Rahman Ayachi, 26, and Raphaël Gendron, 30, run the centre's website. When leaving the courtroom, they said the “Jewish lobby” had “inspired” the complaint.
Besides the jail terms, they were each ordered to pay a fine of 15,000 euros and deposit 2,500 euros into the account of the “Centre for Equal Opportunities and Fight Against to Racism”.
The anti-racism office, which is a Belgian public authority, lodged a complaint against the Islamic centre.
The monetary sentence is designed to compensate the Jewish community for the damage and insulting remarks made by the lawyer for the defence, Sebastien Courtoy, who declared that the Belgian law against revisionism was “fascist and totalitarian”.
Some 20 other people — members of the “Dialogue and Sharing”, a group that aims to promote at Jewish-Arab coexistence – had also lodged a complaint. They will each receive a symbolic compensation of 1 euro.
Racist video
The courtroom was full when the sentence was read by the president.
The two defendants were convicted for denying the Holocaust, minimalising the extent of Nazi crimes and inciting race hatred, especially against Jews, via a video report and prosecutable statements.
The Islamic centre’s “assabyle.com” website had put a link to another site showing a video made by Lebanese students who associated Adolf Hitler with former Israeli foreign minister David Levy.
“To put a weblink on the website is considered as appropriation,” Francois Sant’Angelo, a legal expert for the anti-racism centre, stressed.
The president of the court, Francoise de Lamine de Bex, said in the judgement: “The fact that the video was removed from the site didn’t delete the infringement.
“Confusing Jews and Hitler is considered as incitement to hatred. Freedom of expression is not absolute in our democracy,” she said.
The court also ruled that the two convicted were responsible for the content of messages posted on the site.
Source: EJP (English)
1 comment:
This can be complemented by the fact that the site was already denounced in November 2002, that several parlementarians complained during the last 3 years to the french-speaking socialist minister of Justice, Onkelinx, about it in Parliament and it took a long time before anybody outside the jewish community started moving.
One of the reasons of the slowness could well be that the mayor of the city of Molenbeek (aka Mollahbeek) is from the same party and did not want to hurt people whose votes he counts upon to be reelected. Original Belgian are now fed up with this mayor, Philippe Moureaux, and will emit protest votes!
It is in the same town that the police found the "nice" palestinian terrorist from Bethlehem to whom previoys Belgium minister for external affairs (and some other affairs on it sown) Louis Michel gave hospitality and a 4000 euro a month ad pocket money. Apparently not enough as he dissapeared from his mandatory residence and participated in several robberies.
About what is going on in Molenbeek, a series of articles and a book have been published by Hind Fraihi, a very well integrated freelance journalist: "undercover in Klein-Marocco". Scaring what's goes on there!
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