No action against comic who called Turkish president a goat-shagger

German prosecutors have dropped their case against a comedian accused of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Jan Böhmermann faced up to five years in prison had he been found guilty of insulting a foreign leader, which is a crime under a rarely-used German law.

He read out a poem on TV  which claimed that that Erdogan has sex with goats and sheep and loves to 'repress minorities, kick Kurds and beat Christians while watching child porn'.

 Erdogan filed a complaint, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel told prosecutors to investigate. Critics claimed she was risking the right of free speech to appease the authoritarian Turkish leader in order to secure an EU deal on migrants passing through his country.

In a statement today prosecutors in the city of Mainz, where broadcaster ZDF is based said that ‘criminal actions could not be proven with the necessary certainty’. And they said it was ‘questionable’ that the poem  constituted slander, given its satirical intent.

Böhmermann read the poem on his show Neo Magazin Royale in April, saying 'what I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public - that would be forbidden in Germany.’

It was a response to an earlier skit in which the comedian targeted Erdogan's spending excesses and crackdowns on civil liberties.That provoked Turkish officials to summon Germany's ambassador to protest.

On his twitter account, Böhmermann said he would release a statement tomorrow afternoon.

Published: 4 Oct 2016