Mannheim Regional Court allows charges against Xavier Naidoo

The Mannheim Regional Court has admitted an indictment by the Mannheim public prosecutor's office against the singer Xavier Naidoo with regard to an accusation and has opened the main proceedings before the Mannheim Regional Court. According to its own information, the court allowed an indictment by the public prosecutor's office from July 2023 - in which Naidoo is accused of incitement to hatred combined with insult.

Specifically, Naidoo is said to have “insulted a person who was associated with the Antonio Amadeu Foundation and in this context published texts with anti-Semitic content.” According to its own statements, the foundation is committed to "a democratic civil society that consistently opposes right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism."

The regional court, however, rejected the opening of main proceedings on three further allegations from the indictment from July 2023, as well as two allegations from a further indictment brought by the public prosecutor's office in 2024. Reason: According to the court, there is “no sufficient suspicion of a crime for factual or legal reasons.” The public prosecutor's office has filed an immediate complaint against this, which the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court must decide on. When that will be the case is unclear. A date for the main hearing has not yet been set. Naidoo is presumed innocent until the trial is completed.

On Monday, Naidoo's lawyers, Edgar Gärtner and Jana Eisenbeiß, announced: "After intensive examination, the Mannheim regional court largely followed our opinion and rejected the admission of the charges in five out of six cases." In their opinion, the point on which the lawsuit was admitted does not support the accusation of sedition, according to the lawyers. Your client firmly rejects anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic ideas and distances himself from any form of discrimination.

Naidoo published an apology video in 2022 and admitted that he had been lost in conspiracy stories for years. “I said and did things that I regret today,” he said at the time. His lawyers recently emphasized that the allegations were false and were expressly denied.