A
23-year-old Afghan man who posted antisemitic and anti-Israel comments on his
Facebook page has been sentenced by a court in Upper Austria to a year’s
conditional sentence and ordered to pay a €720 fine.
The
23-year-old man, who speaks German well, said he hadn’t intended to incite
hatred against Jews but had hoped to get attention and lots of ‘likes’ on his
Facebook page.
He
posted a picture of Adolf Hitler with the words “I could have killed all the
Jews, but I left some alive so you would know why I was killing them,” and
another image of a skull and crossbones and the words “Keep calm and fuck
Israel”.
He
told the prosecution that he had only uploaded the images to see how many
‘likes’ he could get.
His
lawyer told the jury that his client came to Austria as an unaccompanied minor
when he was 16 and was granted asylum. His mother has since fled from
Afghanistan and the defence said that the man’s “education has been neglected”.
The
jury found him guilty of breaking Austria’s Prohibition Act, which aims to
suppress any potential revival of Nazism and bans the deliberate belittlement
of Nazi atrocities.
He
was acquitted of a drugs offence because of a lack of evidence and an
unreliable witness.
