BERLIN – A leader of the anti-Islam and anti-immigration group PEGIDA will go on trial in April, charged with incitement over Facebook posts calling foreigners "cattle" and "trash."
Lutz Bachmann wrote on Facebook on Wednesday evening that the trial will open in Dresden on April 19. The district court in Dresden confirmed the date Thursday, news agency dpa reported.
Dresden prosecutors said when they filed charges in October that, with the posts, Bachmann was trying to incite Germans against refugees. Bachmann co-founded PEGIDA, short for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, which has staged weekly protests in Dresden and spawned similar though less successful groups elsewhere.
Bachmann, who disputes the authenticity of the Facebook posts, wrote that the trial was "purely politically motivated" and meant to discredit him and PEGIDA.
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