A French rapper who was charged with inciting murder by calling for white babies to be killed in a music video has been let off by a court without even having to pay a fine.
In Nick Conrad’s music video titled ‘Hang the Whites’ he was depicted torturing and murdering a white man and called for Caucasian babies to be killed.
The 35-year-old caused outrage last year when he released the film showing a white man being abducted, tortured, shot and hanged from a tree.
In one scene from ‘PLB’ – short for ‘Pendez Les Blancs’, or ‘Hang Whites’ in English – the little-known rapper and an associate drag their white victim along the pavement and kick him in the head.
The attack appears to be a reference to a famous scene from the film American History X, in which actor Edward Norton plays a neo-Nazis who stamps on the head of a black man as he lies face down on the pavement.
French rapper Nick Conrad arriving at court for his trial over a video entitled ‘Hang the Whites’, in Paris earlier this month
A gun is also forced down his throat and he is ordered to ‘suck it’.
The lyrics evoke the killing of adults and children and advocated killing ‘white babies’ and ‘hanging their parents’.
The rapper of Cameroonian descent is on trial in Paris where prosecutors could have demanded up to five years in jail and a fine of up to £40,142 (€45,000).
But prosecutors refused to demand jail or even a fine for the rapper after he was charged with ‘direct provocation to commit attacks on life’.
As well as not demanding jail, they also only asked for a ‘suspended’ fine of £4,460 (€5,000) meaning the rapper would only pay a punishment if he offended again.
He will have to wait until 19th March to know the verdict of his trial.
The provocative video shows the abduction, torture and murder of a white man by Conrad and a black friend.
After the man is humiliated and repeatedly asked what it is that white people can do well, he is told to run and is then shot in the back.
In a scene from ‘PLB’ – short for ‘Pendez Les Blancs’, or ‘Hang Whites’ – rapper Nick Conrad and a friend drag their white victim along the pavement and kick him in the head
French rapper Nick Conrad and his lawyer arrive at court in Paris last week. Prosecutors did not ask for jail time and only a ‘suspended’ fine to be imposed
When the victim tries to escape by crawling half-naked in the street, the two men catch up with him and finish him off.
The rapper sings during one scene: ‘I walk into creches, I kill white babies, catch them quick and hang their parents.’
As the victim is about to be strung up, Conrad asks him, ‘show me that you’re a wizard, that white people have that magical DNA’.
He faces court action for inciting racial hatred for the incendiary lyrics and the graphic video, which appears to show him torturing a victim, whose teeth are broken before he is then hanged.
The video was taken off YouTube four days after its official release in September last year.
Prosecutors justified the slap on the wrist punishment by saying that he has ‘to some extent already paid the consequences’.
The rapper says, ‘I walk into creches, I kill white babies, catch them quick and hang their parents’
Conrad, who lost his job as a receptionist at a five-star hotel on Avenue de l’Opera as a result of the song, defended the decision to create the music video, claiming that it was not racist but ‘a message of love’.
By reversing the roles and showing whites being tortured and killed by black people, Conrad claimed he wanted to underline racial problems.
The rapper admitted that he understands those who are concerned by the clip, but denies being a racist.
The video was also shared by controversial black comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, a convicted anti-Semite, who linked it to on his Facebook page and it was viewed thousands of times on YouTube before being taken down.
Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux condemned the ‘hateful, nauseating lyrics in the strongest possible terms’ as did Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, who slammed the video’s ‘abject remarks and ignominious attacks’.
The Paris prosecutors office opened an inquiry four months ago, with the rapper facing charges under France’s strict hate speech laws.
One scene in which he appears to attack a white man appears to be a reference to American neo-Nazi film American History X, starring Edward Norton
Conrad was born and grew up in suburban Paris, but describes himself as an ‘Afro-French’ citizen.
He regularly uses his Facebook account to call for ‘a mutiny’ against France, which he accuses of still being a ‘colonising nation’.
Bruno Retailleau, of the opposition Republicans party, said in September that the song was ‘a call to murder’, adding: ‘It’s intolerable. There are things that should not be allowed because they incite racial hatred. This is a provocation to a crime.’
Anti-racism organisation LICRA, which filed a formal police complaint, also hit out at the rapper, saying his artistic freedom ‘is not the freedom to call for whites to be hanged because of the colour of their skin’.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb criticised the rap video
Until becoming the subject of nation-wide media coverage on Wednesday, Nick Conrad was a virtual unknown, with only 40 monthly listeners on the music streaming platform Spotify.
The nine-minute video, which was uploaded onto YouTube on September 17, presents the action as taking place in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand.
It contains references to a speech by US black nationalist Malcolm X.
On his Twitter account Conrad, who is of Cameroonian origin and has in interviews claimed to be influenced by American hip-hop, had presented it as his ‘first short film’.
Gérard Collomb, Minister of the Interior of France, tweeted at the time: ‘#NickConrad: I condemn unreservedly these abject remarks and ignominious attacks.
‘My services work for the immediate withdrawal of the content broadcast. It will be up to the judicial authority to give appropriate follow-up to these hateful appeals to hatred.’
Comedian Dieudonne M’bala Mbala was banned from the UK because of his hate-filled act.
Dieudonne, who is also from a Cameroonian background, has convictions for a number of hate crimes, including anti-Semitism.