The head of the German Pegida group, which is avowedly against the Islamisation of Europe, has been summoned to stand trial for hate speech.
Lutz Bachmann, 43, had been charged in October with inciting hatred for a series of posts on Pegida’s Facebook page, according to a court in Dresden.
The court alleged that his description of refugees as “cattle” and “scum” “disrupted public order” and constituted an “attack on (the refugees’) dignity.
Trial dates in April and May have been fixed.
Germany has strict laws against hate speech. The German Criminal Code provides for sentences of up to five years for the offence.
“Whoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace… incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population… assaults the human dignity… shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years,” the law states.
Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident) was founded by Bachmann in October 2014 initially as a Facebook page. It attracted a few hundred demonstrators in Dresden.
The numbers grew to some 25,000 people, but interest thinned after Bachmann made explicitly racist remarks and photos of him resembling Hitler were published.
Bachmann was forced to step down over the affair. Later he said it was meant to be satire and was reinstated as the group’s leader in February last year.
But with the continued arrival of migrants, more people have been backing the xenophobic group, which has more than 200,000 social media supporters.
