The German football club Mainz announced on Friday that it had terminated the contract of its player Anwar El Ghazi, after the opening of a judicial investigation for “disturbing public order” concerning his messages on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In a message posted on on social networks.
A few hours earlier, the public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz (west) announced that it had opened an investigation into these messages.
German justice suspects Anwar El Ghazi of “disturbing public order by approving offenses linked to hate speech,” the prosecution explained to the German sports press agency SID, a subsidiary of AFP, confirming information from the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In a message on his Instagram account on October 17, Anwar El Ghazi gave his support to the Palestinians, ending his message with the formula “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This slogan is seen by some as a call for the destruction of Israel, and by others as a call for equal rights between Palestinians and Israelis.
He had been suspended by Mainz, who said they were ready to reinstate him, ensuring that the player had, during several interviews with the club’s management, “distanced himself from his message published on his Instagram account (October 17 ), which he himself deleted a few minutes later.
But on Wednesday, the Dutch international winger remained in his position: “I do not regret, or I have no remorse regarding my position,” he wrote on Instragram. “I do not distance myself from what I said or what I support, today and until my last breath, for humanity and the oppressed.”
El Ghazi, then without a contract, was recruited on September 22 by Mainz and played 51 minutes in three Bundesliga matches.
Israel launched a war to “annihilate” Hamas in retaliation for the unprecedented bloody attack perpetrated on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement, whose commandos killed at least 1,400 people, mostly Israeli civilians, on the edge of the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli authorities who assure that at least 240 hostages are still being held in the territory.
According to a report published Friday by Hamas, 9,227 people, including 3,826 children, were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza.
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