The musician Gil Ofarim has to answer to the court because of the anti-Semitism allegations against a Leipzig hotel. The regional court in Leipzig announced on Wednesday that it had admitted the charge of false suspicion and defamation and opened the main proceedings. The trial is scheduled to begin on October 24.
A year ago, Ofarim reported in a viral video that a hotel employee asked him to take off his Star of David necklace so that he could check in. According to the public prosecutor’s office in Leipzig, the incident did not happen that way. The employee concerned had filed a complaint. According to the court, he appears as a joint plaintiff in the process.
The presumption of innocence applies to Ofarim until the final conclusion of the proceedings. The 40-year-old had not recently spoken publicly. One of his attorneys, Markus Hennig, announced a statement from the defense team for Thursday. Ofarim was born in Munich, he is the son of the Israeli singer Abi Ofarim, who died in 2018.
The 6th Criminal Chamber of the Leipzig Regional Court allowed the charges to remain unchanged. The court also issued a so-called legal notice that in the event of a conviction, the offense of defamation could possibly also be fulfilled.
Lawyer fears a “show trial”
The district court also assumes that it is responsible for the process because of the special importance of the case. It follows the assessment of the public prosecutor’s office.
Ofarim’s Munich lawyer Alexander Stevens criticized in August that the charges had not been brought to the district court. It cannot be denied that the Leipzig judiciary could aim for a “show trial”.
The district court also announced on Wednesday that the Leipzig public prosecutor’s office had brought another charge against Ofarim. It deals with false affidavits, fraud and attempted fraud. The court has not yet decided on the opening of these proceedings. The background to the further charges are two applications for an injunction, with which Ofarim took action against press releases. In it he is said to have “untruthfully sworn to have never stated that the video he created should “go viral”, whereby he is also said to have repeated the – from the point of view of the public prosecutor’s office – inaccurate statements about the words of the hotel employee,” said the dish with.
