A German standup comedian who provoked a major diplomatic row between Berlin and Ankara over a poem insulting the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been told he will not face prosecution. German prosecutors said on Tuesday that they had dropped their investigation into Jan Böhmermann because of insufficient evidence he had committed a crime. Turkey asks Germany to prosecute comedian over Erdoğan poem Read moreBöhmermann created a furore at the end of March when he read a poem on state TV in which he lampooned the Turkish leader, arguing that he was doing so to test the boundaries of satire. But on Tuesday, prosecutors in Mainz said “criminal actions could not be proven with the necessary certainty” and that the charges would be dropped. On 2 November, a Hamburg court will decide whether a private prosecution that Erdoğan himself has brought against the comic can go ahead.

Source: The Guardian October 04, 2016 15:42 UTC