U.S. singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is being investigated on suspicion of inciting hatred in Paris over comments he made in Rolling Stone magazine, French prosecutors said Tuesday.
An organization representing Croatians in France pressed charges against Dylan for allegedly comparing the conflict between Croatians and Serbs to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews in an interview last year for the French edition of Rolling Stone.
Dylan was quoted as saying, “If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Dylan was placed under formal investigation last month by the Paris Main Court for “public injury” and “incitement to hatred.”
Vlatko Maric, secretary general of the Representative Council of the Croatian Community and Institutions, told CNN his organization had brought the case almost a year ago.
Explaining the council’s decision to sue Dylan, Maric said the artist’s remarks in Rolling Stone were of a “rare violence” that had deeply shocked people from a nation still wounded by the conflict of the 1990s.
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