PARIS—A French extreme-right Holocaust denier has been sentenced to one year in prison for anti-Semitic comments he posted on his website.
Alain Soral, 60, wrote on his site, called ‘’Equality and Reconciliation’’ that Jews “are manipulative, domineering and hateful.”
The sentence was over Soral’s Facebook post a year earlier about Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, two anti-racism activists who helped track down dozens of Nazi war criminals.
“This is what happens when you don’t finish the job,” Soral wrote about an article on a state honor conferred on the Klarsfelds by Germany.
He had been convicted several times of incitement to hatred over a stream of anti-Semitic comments over the years.
A judge found Soral, who has long been a well-known writer on the French far-right and an ally of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, guilty of “justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity.” It marked only one of Soral’s multiple convictions for minimizing or mocking the Holocaust.
“We will continue to prosecute Mr. Soral as long as he makes anti-Jewish remarks,” said attorney Ilana Soskin, representing the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, which brought the latest complaint against Soral.
The French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) praised the Bobigny Croiminal Court for sentencing what it described as ‘’a little propagandist of hatred.”
The World Jewish Congress CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singer also welcomed the sentence.
“Alain Sorel represents the lowest common denominator, exploiting his position of popularity for years to incite against others and gather support for a hateful political agenda,” Singer said. “He was sentenced this time for calling Jews manipulative, domineering and hateful, three words that can rightfully be used to describe Soral’s own tactics. We hope that this sentencing will serve as a lesson for anybody who believes that verbal incitement can go unpunished.”