THE HAGUE: A Dutch appeals court on Thursday fined an Arab organization in the Netherlands €2,500 for causing "unnecessary offence" in publishing a Holocaust-denying cartoon.
"The Holocaust is a black page in the history of humanity," the appeals court in Arnhem in the eastern Netherlands said in a statement.
"The suggestion that it may have been contrived or exaggerated by victims is extraordinarily offensive for the victims and their surviving relatives, in this case the Jews."
The Dutch leg of the Arab European League (AEL) re-published the cartoon on its website last year, saying it wanted to point out double standards in society.
It was reacting to a decision by Dutch prosecutors not to put far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders on trial for distributing controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
In April, a court acquitted the AEL of insulting Jews by publishing the cartoon, which depicts the Nazi Holocaust as a figment of Jewish imagination.
But appeals judges agreed with prosecutors that the cartoon was more offensive than could be justified by the debate.
They fined the organization €2,500 ($3,200), of which €1,500 was suspended.
