A 28-year-old Austrian man who called for Jews to be gassed in a
Facebook post was sentenced to eight months in prison on Tuesday by Wels
Provincial Court.
The defendant, who was found guilty of incitement, posted a message on
Facebook last September referring to the conflict in Gaza that read: “Show no
photos of our dead brothers, children, women. Show only photos of their women
and children…”. He is also said to have written: “Death to the Jews, I would
gas them”, “Hitler showed the world that he was right, Sieg Heil!”.
A second defendant, a 26-year-old man who commented on the post with the
words “Sieg Heil! Adolf Hitler”, was acquitted by the court.
Both men were born in Turkey but have Austrian citizenship and live in
the city of Wels. They both held previous convictions for unrelated offences
and neither is thought to have connections to right wing scenes.
The message was posted on Facebook while the 28-year-old was living in a
drug treatment clinic in Carinthia last year. Both men confessed to the
postings during the investigation and the 26-year-old told the court that his
comment had been “stupid” and added: “I’m sorry. I did not really mean it.”
Although the 28-year-old initially told police he had posted the “fun”
statement, in court he claimed it had been written by his roommate, whom he
said was a schizophrenic patient whose family followed Nazi ideology.
