German Anti-Immigrant Leader Fined Over Facebook Post
Source: New York Times
MAY 3, 2016
BERLIN — One of the leaders of Pegida, the German anti-immigrant movement, was found guilty of incitement on Tuesday for insulting refugees in a social media post two years ago.
Lutz Bachmann, who helped found Pegida, the German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, was ordered by the district court in Dresden to pay a fine of 9,600 euros, or $11,000. Prosecutors had sought a jail sentence of up to seven months for the post, in which he called immigrants “cattle,” “brutes” and “trash.”
Mr. Bachmann insisted throughout his trial that someone else had posted the remarks to his Facebook page, according to a local public broadcaster, MDR. It was not clear if Mr. Bachmann, who has previous convictions of theft, drug dealing and failing to provide child support, would seek an appeal.
Tuesday was not the first time that Mr. Bachmann has run into trouble over his presence on social media. Last year, he was briefly forced to step down as the head of Pegida after posting a picture of himself dressed as Hitler to his Facebook account.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/world/europe/lutz-bachmann-pegida-fined-germany.html?_r=0
