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FAITH UNDER FIRE Germany silences pro-lifers, homeschoolers, creationists Crime is 'incitement of the people,' court rules in ordering prison term Posted: June 28, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Chelsea Schilling © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com A 55-year-old Lutheran pastor has been found guilty of "volksverhetzung" or "incitement of the people" by a German court and will spend a year in jail after an Erlangen court claimed he made a statement denying the Holocaust suffered by the Jews at the hands of Nazi-Germany during World War II. Johannes Lerle compared Germany's abortion rate of 150,000 annually to the murder of Jews in Auschwitz...

This editorial is prompted by a necessary (in our opinion) retraction of the Tuesday story entitled "German Pastor Sentenced to a Year in Jail for Comparing Abortion to the Nazi Holocaust." The incident provides an opportunity to explain the LifeSiteNews policy on reporting accuracy and response to the inevitable occasional misreporting of some facts. LifeSiteNews originally produced the now retracted story after reading a report by a trusted European news source that has in the past broken accurate, major stories on the culture wars in Europe. We further confirmed elements of the story from German news sources which we had...

Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for “Volksverhetzung” (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe’s official ideology. The European governments are asked to fight the expression of creationist opinions, such as young earth and intelligent design theories. According to the Council of Europe these theories are “undemocratic” and “a threat to human rights.”Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase...

A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the "crime" of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust. In response, Jim Hughes, Vice-President of International Right to Life Federation has called on pro-life activists internationally to take action on the matter by contacting German authorities to demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion for the pastor (see contact information below the story). Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews in Auschwitz. The court, which consisted of...

The LifeSiteNews.com story published Tuesday on the jailing of Pastor Lerle in Germany has been retracted after LifeSiteNews.com was informed that we were working with false information. While Pastor Lerle has in the past been jailed for anti-abortion activities his current one year imprisonment stemmed solely from holocaust denial and not from comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust as we erroneously reported Tuesday. My sincere apologies for this serious error. John-Henry Westen Editor LifeSiteNews.com

ERLANGEN, Germany, June 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria, gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the “crime” of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust. In response, Jim Hughes, Vice President of International Right to Life Federation has called on pro-life activists internationally to take action on the matter by contacting German authorities to demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion for the pastor (see contact information below story). Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews...