Jul
Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is suing the country’s celebrated anti-mafia author Roberto Saviano for defamation over a tweet that described him as “minister of the underworld”. “I filed a lawsuit against Saviano, as promised,” Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the League party, wrote on Twitter. “I accept any criticisms, […]
Feb
Polish president President Andrzej Duda signed a bill on Tuesday that authorizes jail time for people convicted of suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust. Poland is the location of several former concentration campus, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1 million people — almost all of them Jews — were systematically killed in World War II. […]
Jan
According to The Guardian, a documentary producer, a photojournalist, a live-streamer and a freelance reporter have been charged with serious offences under Washington DC’s anti-rioting laws. It comes after two more journalists, Evan Engel of Vocativ and Alex Rubinstein of RT America, were also caught up in the police action against demonstrators. All have faced […]
Dec
A Muslim woman has been hit with a €30,000 fine for wearing a niqab at a town hall in Italy, it has been reported. The 40-year-old woman wore the full-body veil at a youth parliament meeting in Pordenone, north-east Italy, last month, Messaggero Veneto reported. According to the newspaper, she was asked to remove the […]
Dec
A Dutchman has been sentenced to 30 days in jail under a rarely enforced 19th century law for intentionally insulting King Willem-Alexander, according to a court ruling published on Thursday. The 44-year-old man from the city of Kampen, whose name was not released, had posted a message on his Facebook page in April 2015 calling […]
May
A municipal worker in Evry, France has been suspended four months from office over a photomontage depicting the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls as Adolf Hitler. The mayor of the Paris suburb of Evry, Francis Chouat, has announced the temporary suspension of a municipal worker for photoshopping rude images of the country’s prime minister. The worker shared […]
May
An anti-monarchy campaigner is being taken to court for insulting the Dutch royal family at a rally in Amsterdam in 2014. Abulkasim al-Jaberi was arrested at a demonstration against Zwarte Piet for shouting ‘fuck the king, fuck the queen and fuck the monarchy’. After refusing to accept an out of court deal involving a €500 fine, […]
Jul
Anne-Sophie Leclere, a former local election candidate for the far-right political party Front National in France has been sentenced to nine months in prison for comparing the country’s justice minister, who is black, to an ape. Leclere provoked a storm last year when she compared Christiane Taubira to an ape on French television and posted […]
Nov
Hervé Eon, 61, a leftwing activist, held up his sign as French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Laval, western France, in August 2008. A4-sized cardboard sign did not feature Sarkozy’s name but said simply: “Casse-toi pov’con.” The line, which means “get lost, you prat” had been uttered by Sarkozy months earlier when a man refused […]
