– again

French comedian Dieudonné has been ordered to pay €20, 000 after a court ruled that inviting a Holocaust denier on stage was a ‘public anti-Semitic insult’.

It is the sixth time the 43-year-old comedian – who is due to perform in London next year – has been fined for comments about Jewish people.

Yesterday’s court ruling stemmed from a stand-up show in which Dieudonné invited convicted Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson to receive an award from an actor dressed as a concentration camp victim.

Paris judges fined him €10,000 and awarded the same amount in legal costs to the eight groups that sued him.

A spokesman for one of those organisations, SOS Racisme, said: ‘We are quite satisfied with this decision. This shows yet again that Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala is not a comedian but uses that label to express his hatred.

The Cameron-born comedian has previously stood for the European Parliament as head of the Anti-Zionist Party, formed with far-rightwinger Alain Soral.

His previous fines were:

• €4,500 in 2006 for calling a prominent Jewish TV presenter a ‘secret donor of the child-murdering Israeli army’.
• €5,000 in 2007 for calling the Jews ‘slave traders’.
• €7,000 in 2008 for calling the Holocaust ‘memorial pornography’.
• CA$75,000 in February this year by a Montreal court for defamatory statements with antisemtic undertones against the singer and actor Patrick Bruel.
• €3,000 in March for defaming Jewish journalist Elisabeth Schemla, who had branded him an anti-semite.

Dieudonne is due to appear at London’s Leicester Square Theatre in March – although the show is said to focus on marital violence rather than any political message.

Published: 28 Oct 2009