France fines comedian 10,000 euros over anti-Semitic stunt
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124215.htmlA French court on Tuesday fined a right-wing comedian 10,000 euros for "public anti-Semitic insults" after he invited Robert Faurisson, an academic and Holocaust denier, on stage during a comedy show to receive an "award" from an actor dressed as a Jewish deportee.
The Paris court told Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, a 43-year-old French stand-up comic, to pay a further 10,000 in damages and legal fees to organizations that sued him, French news agency AFP reported.
Dieudonne told the court that the show had been intended as a "comedy bomb attack" but defended his right to free expression. Anti-racism and Jewish groups welcomed the verdict, AFP reported.
Dieudonne has courted controversy in the past. Earlier this year he tried entering politics by running for the European parliament as head of an anti-Zionist party.
In 2007, the comedian was fined after he accused Jews of exploiting "memorial pornography" and attacked a "Zionist lobby which cultivates the idea of their unique suffering...and has declared war on the black world."
Two months later he was back in court and fined 5,000 euros for having compared Jews to "slave-traders."
He remains under investigation over a video circulating on the Internet in which he appears to attack a "yid Zionist lobby" led by "racist liars."
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