A district court in the southern Porvoo region in Finland has convicted two newspaper editors for publishing a letter justifying the Holocaust, saying it was an acceptable course of action taken by Nazi Germany and that it was justifiable to act violently against Jews today.
According to the prosecutor, Uusimaa, a small regional newspaper, and the Kansan Uutiset, a left-wing paper belonging to the Left Alliance party in Finland, broke the law in July by publishing a letter written by Usko Takkumaki, which addresses the situation in the Middle East and criticizes Israel for its actions.
According to the prosecutor, the letter had been submitted for publication at several newspapers in Finland, but was published only in two of them. The publication in Uusimaa was done with full knowledge and support of the editor while the publication in Kansan Uutiste, the court ruled, had been done by human error without the knowledge of the editor.
In light of the findings revealed by the court, the editor of Uusimaa was fined $1,300 for incitement to violence, and the editor of Kansan Uutiset, who had not seen the letter before it was published, was fined $500 for professional negligence. Takkumaki, who wrote the anti-Semitic letter, was fined $740.