PARIS
French comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala has been fined €22,500 ($24,000) after being convicted of making a joke about gas chambers in reference to a Jewish journalist.
Dieudonne, who had potentially faced up to a year in prison and €45,000 fine, was found guilty of "incitement to racial hatred" by the Paris Criminal Court on Thursday for saying that hearing Jewish veteran France Inter radio journalist Patrick Cohen speak made him think of Nazi gas chambers.
Cohen had questioned in a radio broadcast in 2013 whether media give Dieudonne with so much airtime, given his provocative stage acts.
The comic later replied Cohen should consider emigrating, adding: "When I hear Patrick Cohen speaking, I say to myself, you see, the gas chambers ... too bad."
The French government subsequently banned the comic's shows.
- Second conviction
The conviction, to which Dieudonne had pleaded not guilty, was the comedian's second in two days at the Paris Criminal Court.
He received a suspended two-month prison sentence on Wednesday after being convicted of advocating terrorism for posting a reference to January's gun attacks in Paris on his official Facebook page.
Dieudonne was fined €65,000 for anti-Semitic and racial slurs following performances in 2014.
He has insisted he is not anti-Semitic but he holds anti-Zionist and anti-establishment views.
- Open criticism
Dieudonne, 48, is among hundreds of people who were arrested in France following the two gun attacks in January.
Paris-born and the son of a Cameroonian father and French mother, he began his comedy career with a Jewish sidekick in the early 1990s and appeared in several films.
Originally active with anti-racist, left-wing groups, he began openly criticizing Jews and Israel in 2002 and ran in the European elections two years later with a pro-Palestinian party.
