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Dutch Muslim group fined over Holocaust cartoon

 

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/world/Dutch+Muslim+group+fined+over+Holocaust+cartoon/3418405/story.html

Dutch Muslim group fined over Holocaust cartoon

Reuters August 19, 2010 Comments (11)

This photo taken in 1940 shows Anne Frank, a Dutch Jewish girl who was killed in a concentration camp during the Second World War. A Dutch
Muslim group has been fined the equivalent of $3,200 for publishing a cartoon suggesting the Holocaust was exaggerated.

This photo taken in 1940 shows Anne Frank, a Dutch Jewish girl who was killed in a concentration camp during the Second World War. A Dutch
Muslim group has been fined the equivalent of $3,200 for publishing a cartoon suggesting the Holocaust was exaggerated.
Photograph by: Handout, AFP

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch Muslim group was fined 2,500 euros, or about $3,200, for publishing a cartoon which suggested the Holocaust was made up
or exaggerated by Jews, a Dutch appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The court in the western city of Arnhem overruled an acquittal handed down by a Dutch lower court, saying the cartoon, published on the
website of the Arab European League's (AEL) in 2006, was "unnecessarily hurtful".

"The court points out that the European Court of Human Rights, which considers freedom of speech of paramount importance and defends it
thoroughly, makes no exception for the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust," the court said.

The court also imposed a 2-year probation period on the AEL.

The cartoon shows two men in Auschwitz looking at several dead bodies. "I don't think they are Jews", says one man. The other replies: "We
have to get to the 6,000,000 (figure) somehow.” Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

The Dutch group says it had no intention of disputing the Holocaust, but wanted instead to highlight what it described as double standards
in free speech.

The AEL circulated it in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad which triggered an outcry among Muslims
in many countries.