Accusation of hate speech: trials against corona deniers

The Corona measures critic Bhakdi has to answer to the court for sedition. Another protagonist in the corona denial scene will soon be tried for the same allegation

Almost five months after the indictment by the Schleswig-Holstein public prosecutor’s office, the district court in Plön decided to bring charges against Sucharit Bahkdi. The controversial critic of the Corona measures will have to answer for two cases of sedition in March 2023 before the Plön district court, a court spokeswoman said tagesschau.de With.

In an Internet video in connection with critical statements about Israel’s vaccination policy, Bhakdi incited hatred against Jews living in Germany with generalizing statements and maliciously despised them as a religious group, a spokeswoman for the prosecution had previously said at the request of tagesschau.de communicated.

Investigations initially suspended

Bhakdi had claimed in a video that “the Jewish people” had learned “archevil” from the Nazis and “implemented” it. Even after that he had repeatedly expressed Shoah and NS relativizing. The public prosecutor’s office in Kiel was initially unable to identify any criminal incitement to hatred or a relativization of the Holocaust and discontinued the investigation. “The statements made by the accused in the video are primarily directed against the State of Israel as such, whereby he refers to the policies there in the course of the measures to contain the Covid 19 pandemic,” the statement said at the time.

Bhakdi sees himself as being persecuted

In a video, Bhakdi indirectly compared the charges against him with the persecution under National Socialism: “All the people in the world say: Well, Germany, what else should you expect? They already have…” For the process he threatens: “If that Plön district court dares to open the main proceedings against me, then Plön and Schleswig-Holstein will become the center of the world, because international protesters, defenders of me, are ready and will come.”

Trial against further critics of measures

Bhakdi is not the only critic of the measures who has to answer to the court for sedition: the lawyer Reiner Fuellmich, co-chairman of the party “die Basis”, for which Bhakdi ran as the top candidate in the federal elections, has received a penalty order for this allegation.

The lawyer claimed in a video: “It wasn’t Hitler who did it, it was the American financial system.” Since he lodged an objection to the penalty order, the main hearing will now also take place in this case, as a court spokesman confirmed.

According to some statements, Fuellmich is also part of the legal team that wants to defend Bhakdi at his trial in Plön. According to Fuellmich, other members are the lawyer Wilfried Schmitz, who questions the rule of law and sovereignty in Germany, and the Bielefeld law professor Martin Schwab, who had also attracted attention with controversial theses on the corona pandemic.