STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Danish prosecutors on Tuesday charged an imam with calling for the killing of Jews in the first case of its kind in the Nordic nation and which sparked political outrage.Imam Mundhir Abdallah, who preaches in the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Norrebro at the Masjid Al-Faruq mosque, which media have linked to radical Islam, is accused of citing a hadith or koranic narrative calling for Muslims to rise up against Jews.
"Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," Abdallah said in a Facebook and YouTube video post in March.
"These are serious statements and I think it's right for the court to now have an opportunity to assess the case," public prosecutor Eva Ronne said in a statement.
This is the first time the prosecution has raised such charges under a criminal code introduced January 1 2017 on religious preaching.
Ronne said it's legal to quote religious books like the Koran and the Bible, but that inciting or welcoming the killings of people could be punishable by up to three years in prison.
"It has always been illegal to accept killings of a certain group of people, but it's new for us to target hate preachers," she added.
The case will be brought before the Copenhagen district court but no trial date has been set, the prosecution said.
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