German prosecutors on Tuesday charged the head of the country's top far-right party with racial defamation and prejudice against non-white football players.
Prosecutor Simone Herbeth said in a statement that Udo Voigt, head of the National Democratic Party (NPD), was charged with incitement and defamation for targeting non-white players of the nation's soccer team in a pamphlet printed before the 2006 World Cup.
NPD spokesman Klaus Beier and Frank Schwerdt, a leading member of NPD, have also been charged, Herbeth said.
The flyers showed the traditional white German jersey with the No.25 - worn at the time by black defender Patrick Owomoyela.
They read: "White, not just a jersey color! For a real NATIONAL team!"
Herbeth said the picture "called into question whether this player, as well as other non-white-skinned players, were worthy of representing Germany as national players."
Owomoyela, who has a German mother and a Nigerian father, plays for Werder Bremen but is no longer a member of the German nationalsquad.
Backed by the German soccer federation, he filed a suit against the NPD in 2006 over the pamphlets, some 70,000 of which were confiscated by authorities during a search at the party's national headquarters.
Source:Xinhua
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