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Mayor wins Nazi jibe appeal
19/10/2006 16:54 - (SA)
London - London Mayor Ken Livingstone won his appeal on Thursday against a disciplinary panel ruling that said he had brought his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi camp guard.
High court justice Andrew Collins, who had already quashed a four-week suspension from office the panel imposed on Livingstone, said the remark was offensive but that the mayor had the right to express his views "as forcibly as he thought fit".
"Surprising as it may perhaps appear to some, the right of freedom of speech does extend to abuse," Collins said in overturning the Adjudication Panel for England's finding.
The panel ruled in February that the two-term mayor was guilty of making remarks that were "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" and ordered him suspended from his job for four weeks.
'Offensive abuse'
Livingstone has denied any intention of offending the Jewish community when, in a testy conversation last year, he asked Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold whether he had been a "German war criminal".
Collins said the mayor's comments amounted to "offensive abuse" and that it was indefensible that even after Finegold said he was Jewish, Livingstone went on to liken him to a concentration camp guard.
"He should have realised it would not only give great offence to him but was likely to be regarded as an entirely inappropriate observation by Jews in general, and those who had survived the Holocaust in particular," the judge said.
He also said Livingstone should have apologised for the hurt he had caused and could probably have avoided disciplinary action had he done so.
- AP
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