German state prosecutors have dropped an investigation into television satirist Jan Böhmermann for insulting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In March Böhmermann described the Turkish leader on-air as a lover of child pornography and of sex with animals. He said his intention was to highlight limits on free speech in Germany thanks to a law that imposes jail terms on anyone convicted of insulting a foreign head of state.
Amid protests from Ankara, German chancellor Angela Merkel passed on the complaint to the federal prosecutor in Mainz, who announced on Tuesday that they would not pursue the case. By deliberately overdoing his insults of the Turkish leader, prosecutors said Mr Böhmermann’s on-air segment “served as an example of a transgression of freedom of opinion” rather than a transgression in itself.
Mr Erdogan is still demanding that Mr Böhmermann’s insults are banned in a civil case, to be heard in a Hamburg court in November.
