French comic sentenced to jail for Holocaust denial

PanARMENIAN.Net - Controversial French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala has been sentenced to two months in jail by a Belgian court for racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium, BBC News reports.

Dieudonne was also fined €9,000 by the court in the city of Liege. He was not in court.

The comedian, who insists he is not anti-Semitic, made the remarks during a show in Liege in 2012.

He has several convictions for anti-Semitism and hate speech.

One of his most recent was after the attack in January on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Dieudonne rose to prominence through the invention of the "quenelle", a hand gesture critics have likened to an inverted Nazi salute.

Several French cities have banned the comedian from performing.

The Belgian court's judgement on Wednesday, November 25 said that "all the accusations against Dieudonne were established - both incitement to hatred and hate speech but also Holocaust denial".

Eric Lemmens, a lawyer for Belgium's Jewish organisations, said the guilty verdict was a "major victory".