A Greek court convicted a newspaper publisher of hate speech and defamation for running an op-ed that called a Jewish community leader a thief.
The Athens Court of Justice of First Instance last month levied a $2,200 penalty on Stefanos Chios, publisher of the Makeleio newspaper, according to the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece in a statement on Tuesday.
“A crude Jew who runs a loan-shark firm has bought the debts of poor Greeks. The president of the Jewish community who pretends to be our friend, is stealing our money through the back door,” wrote Chios in a piece in 2017 about the previous president of the Jewish Community of Athens, Minos Moissis.
Moissis, co-founder of the SYNERGON Partners banking and finance firm, filed a lawsuit against Chios three years ago.
Along with defaming Moissis personally, the newspaper “contributed deliberately to the reproduction of a rhetoric of hate against the Greek Jewry,” said the court.
