John Galliano fined for racial abuse
French court hands fashion designer a suspended fine of $8,400 for anti-Semitic remarks.
A French court has convicted fashion designer John Galliano of anti-Semitic behaviour and handed him a suspended sentence over his series of drunken outbursts in a Paris bar.
The court in the French capital handed out a $8,400 suspended fine for two incidents, in February this year and October 2010.
One of the incidents in a Parisian café made headlines around the world when mobile phone footage was posted on the internet showing an inebriated Galliano insulting other customers.
Galliano was fired from Dior as its creative director following the incident.
Sidney Toledano, Dior’s chief executive and president, said: “The fact that the name of Dior has been linked through its designer, as brilliant as he may be, to intolerable words, is very painful for us.”
Lawyers for the Jewish couple whom he insulted said Galliano’s fame and position gave him extra responsibilities.
They said a well-known person should be even more irreproachable than people who are not famous.
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports from Paris.