In France, comic Dieudonne on trial for Facebook post

On trial for condoning terrorism, a French comedian says he condemns last month's Paris attacks "without any ambiguity." Prosecutors say Dieudonne supported the assailants on Facebook and should be fined 30,000 euros.

In the first day of his trial on Wednesday, the French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala denied that he verbally supported the men whose attacks left 17 dead in Paris last month. On January 14, police had arrested Dieudonne, as he is known, alleging that he had used Facebook to joke about the killings, which began at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7.

"I feel treated like a terrorist," Dieudonne told the court in Paris as his trial opened on Wednesday.

Dieudonne's fateful Facebook post, "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly," combined "Je suis Charlie" - "I am Charlie": the catchall for free-speech movements following the shootings - and the name of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman and four men at a kosher supermarket two days after the magazine attack. For his not-so-bon mot, French police arrested Dieudonne as one of dozens of cases opened for "condoning terrorism" after the attacks, which killed 17 people.

http://www.dw.de/in-france-comic-dieudonne-on-trial-for-facebook-post/a-18234916