Alison Chabloz to stand trial for breach of suspended sentence following action by CAA, as France bans her from returning for 40 years
Notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz will stand trial next month in Chesterfield, where it will be determined whether blog posts published by her since June 2018 constitute a breach of the social media ban that was imposed as a part of her sentence. The trial follows contact between Campaign Against Antisemitism’s lawyers and the National Probation Service.
Separately, Ms Chabloz discovered that she has been banned from entering France for forty years, until 2059, when she would be 95 years old. Posting on the social media platform Gab, known for its popularity with right-wing extremists, Ms Chabloz revealed that a recent attempt to visit France resulted in her being interviewed by both French police and the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service.
Last year, Ms Chabloz was convicted on three charges of sending grossly offensive communications via a public communications network. The case began as a private prosecution by Campaign Against Antisemitism, which was then taken over and continued by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The charges related to three self-penned songs in which she denounced a supposed Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world and attacked the Holocaust as a fraud perpetrated by Jews for financial gain.
The conviction set a new precedent in British law, effectively delivering a landmark precedent verdict on incitement on social media and on whether the law considers Holocaust denial to be “grossly offensive” and therefore illegal when used as a means by which to hound Jews.
District Judge John Zani found Ms Chabloz guilty and sentenced her to a 20-week prison sentence suspended for two years, 180 hours of unpaid community service, an indefinite order against contacting two leaders of Campaign Against Antisemitism, as well as an order banning her from social media for 12 months. She was also ordered to pay a £115 victim surcharge, and costs of £600. Earlier this year, the conviction and sentence were upheld at Southwark Crown Court, where Judge Christopher Hehir, sitting with lay magistrate Ms M Rego, said of Ms Chabloz, “She is a Holocaust denier…she is manifestly antisemitic and obsessed with the wrongdoing of Jews,” adding that, on the subject of the Holocaust, “she has lost all sense of perspective.”
Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “We look forward, as ever, to the law taking its proper course.”