Alison Chabloz

A friend, Gerd Ittner, gave me the task of translating and sending this letter to Dieudonné. I entrust the administration to your care. Here is the letter:

Dear Mr Dieudonné,

I asked one of my French friends to send you this letter and publish it for me.

I cannot do it myself because I am a political prisoner in the Federal Republic of Germany guilty of non-violent speech. Solely for exercising my right to freedom of expression, I’ve been imprisoned for three years now. What hypocrisy: first they chant “Je suis Charlie” praising freedom of expression and claiming to want to combat terrorism; and on the other hand they are themselves terrorists against freedom of expression!

In 2012, after seven years of exile in different countries, I was arrested in Portugal and extradited to West Germany for expressing my thoughts [against the war in Iraq, denouncing the US government and American Indian Genocide] in 2002 and 2003.

Obviously, I was guilty because I didn’t use the correct form of freedom of expression, the one whose sole purpose is to humiliate other religions and hurt several million people by drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Criticism of Holocaust stories is the wrong kind of freedom of expression. Stories implement by a very powerful and influential organized lobby which influences businesses, government policy and finance.

I learned that democracy permitted offensiveness towards the religious sensibilities of millions of people worldwide but that it did not allow the business of a certain group of individuals to be disturbed by uncomfortable questions.

Who needs a “democracy” like this, from these same individuals? I have always believed that democracy was supposed to defend people’s interests, not those of a small but highly influential group of businessmen and stateless Meistersingers.

My punishment was completed in October 2014 but I was not released from prison. I have to stay here until another trial for “denial of crimes against humanity,” they opened against me. I am accused of “denying the Holocaust” in private letters, written when I was in prison in Portugal as I waited for my extradition. The subject of my letters did not address the issue of “the Holocaust” in detail, but just to ask why freedom of expression is not effective for this period of history.

The state prosecutor said that asking this question in itself a crime, because my intentions were to deny “the Holocaust”. The Court said that I should wait for my trial in prison because I was still going to spend a long time for my terrible crime.

Maybe you and your readers might ask the German Embassy in France how the FRG may exclaim “Je suis Charlie” and rent the freedom of expression, intimating the order to respect the freedom of Expression to China and Russia, while people like me are enclosed as political prisoners, including serious criminals, just because of a non-violent speech.

Dear Mr Dieudonné, I really appreciate your work and mindset. I assure you of my support and my sympathy.

Cordially,

Gerhard Ittner
Prisonnier politique en RFA
JVA Nürnberg
Bärenschanzstr. 68
D-90429 Nürnberg