Prosecutors in the trial of a Montreal man accused of inciting hatred against Jews could not establish that the assassination of Jews by Adolf Hitler’s regime was a consequence of Nazi ideology, he said. Friday a Quebec court judge.
The case involves 35-year-old Gabriel Sohier Chaput, who faces a charge of deliberately promoting hatred in connection with an article he has admitted he wrote that was published in 2017 on the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. The blog post included racist images and comments about Jews everywhere, and the website featured photos of Hitler and other images associated with Nazism.
Prosecutor Patrick Lafrenière said it was known that the Daily Stormer is a far-right website and that Nazi ideology led directly to the murder of millions of Jews.
But Judge Manlio Del Negro was not satisfied. “You (Mr.) Lafrenière, did not present an expert opinion,” the judge said.
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“The Crown demands a lot,” Del Negro said. “You are making arguments that have not been put to the test (…) I am not convinced that doing what you ask of me does not harm the accused.”
Read more: Final arguments underway in trial against Montreal man accused of inciting hatred
Sohier Chaput’s defense attorney, Helene Poussard, jumped into the discussion and told the judge that, “today, Nazism is used to describe everything. We mix the Holocaust with Nazism. “
Poussard added that “it is not because the Jews were exterminated that it was part of the ideology.” He then suggested that Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps “to save money.”
The judge scolded her, “You’ve crossed the line!” He said.
The judge then turned to Lafreniere. “You see, (Mr.) Lafreniere, it’s your fault. It would have been easy to prove that the Daily Stormer was a far-right place. It would have been easy to bring in a historian to prove that Nazism was behind the extermination of the Jews.”
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The two sides agreed to return to the courts on August 29 to set a date for a debate on whether it is known that the Daily Stormer is a far-right website and that Nazism did lead to the Holocaust.
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Read more: A Montreal man accused of inciting hatred testifies in his own defense
Friday before, Lafrenière presented his final arguments, trying to prove that the text written by Sohier Chaput and the context in which it was published were odious. The article said that 2017 would be the year of “non-stop Nazism, everywhere.”
“You have to consider the context,” Lafrenière said. “Nazism is the greatest manifestation of hatred towards Jews.”
The article’s degrading comments, its aggressive tone, and the description of Jews as “our enemies,” the lawyer said, “probably promote hatred” against the Jewish community.
Poussard presented his final arguments in March, stating that his client was being ironic and trying to make his readers laugh.
Sohier Chaput, meanwhile, testified during the trial that the Daily Stormer was a “place of parody.”
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Lafrenière said Friday that the site is apparently a serious website and is not intended to be a joke.
Sohier Chaput, who wrote under the pseudonym Zeiger, published about 1,000 articles in The Daily Stormer, making him one of the site’s most prolific contributors.
Lafrenière said the defendant wrote the entire article and that some derogatory terms used toward Jews were not added by an editor, as Sohier Chaput has stated.
Some 40 protesters who identified with the anti-fascist movement stood in front of the Montreal courthouse to express their lack of confidence in the judicial system “to combat the influence of the far right and the fascist threat.”
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