Court deems Nazi-saluting dog on YouTube ‘grossly offensive’

Mark Meechan is scheduled to be sentenced on April 23 after Airdrie Sheriff Court found him guilty of communicating a “threatening and grossly offensive” video on YouTube.

After the verdict Meechan, who goes by the name @CountDankulaTV on Twitter, told his 72,000 online followers the court warned him of up to a year in prison and a possible Restriction Of Liberty Order with a GPS tracking device while being “under house arrest”.

Claiming the video was “for the purposes of comedy”, he previously said that he had received support for the joke from famous Jewish comedian David Baddiel.

And star of <i>The Office</i> Ricky Gervais stepped into the debate after the conviction by tweeting: “If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find ‘grossly offensive’, then you don’t believe in freedom of speech.”

The controversial case dates back to an incident in April 2016 when Meechan filmed his dog Buddha responding to the “gas the jews” command, which he repeated 23 times, and is seen raising a paw to fascist chant “Sieg Heil” under footage titled <i>M8 Yur Dug’s a Nazi</i>.

The stunt provoked outrage after being posted on YouTube where it has had more than three million views.

After complaints were made about the content to Police Scotland, he was arrested for allegedly committing a hate crime by uploading the footage.

Meechan, 30, of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, was charged with posting anti-Semitic material when the clip emerged last April.

Prosecutors said he communicated material that would cause fear and alarm and stir up hatred on religious grounds by posting a clip that was “anti-Semitic in nature” to YouTube.

Meechan told Airdrie Sheriff Court he made the video to annoy girlfriend, Suzanne Kelly, 29, and denied any wrongdoing.

At the start of the video, he says: “My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is so I thought I would turn him into the least cute thing I could think of which is a Nazi.”

But the procurator fiscal argued that they do not believe the video was intended to be a joke and that Meechan had “a particular audience in mind” when he uploaded it to YouTube.

Having lost eight jobs since posting the video, Meechan claimed he only intended it to be seen by seven of his friends, who follow his YouTube channel, Count Dankula.

But he says the video was shared by someone he does not know on the social news aggregation site Reddit, which led to the surge in its popularity.

In previous hearings, Meechan had mentioned that the video was meant to be taken as a joke but the procurator fiscal said: “In a criminal court in Scotland, Mr Meechan does not decide the context, the court decides.”

The prosecution described Meechan as a “highly intelligent and articulate individual” but said that the pug was being used as a “prop”.

Meechan’s defence lawyer Ross Brown said one of his friends leaked the material and so the content went viral.

“It was not a matter that was able to be reasonably foreseen,” he said, adding that there was no evidence Meechan had intended to “stir up hatred on religious grounds.”

Mr Brown said there was no evidence of a complainer in the case, adding Police Scotland was not contacted by anyone who found the video “grossly offensive or menacing.”

He criticised the force saying Meechan’s arrest was “an attempt to demonstrate diversity credentials.”

He said: “The complainer would appear to be Police Scotland.”

Sheriff Derek O’Carroll found Meechan guilty of sending by “means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.

Giving his verdict, Sheriff O’Carroll said: “In my view, there is no doubt it’s grossly offensive.”

He said Meechan knew the video was offensive as he said himself during his evidence that he “likes offensive comedy.”

Sheriff O’Carroll added: “He said he chose ‘gas the jews’ as it was the most offensive phrase associated with the Nazis that he could think of. It was the centre piece of the joke. He said it was so extreme that it added to the comedy.”

Meechan “knew what he was doing” he said, adding: “It is self-evident that the material is anti-semitic.”

He did not believe Meechan’s defence that the video was made as a private joke to annoy his girlfriend and he pointed out that he had “not taken any steps to prevent the video being shared publicly”.

Ephraim Borowski, 66, director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, told the court the Holocaust should not be joked about and doing so normalised antisemitism.

Mr Borowski told the court how he lost members of his own family to the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

He was shown the recording of the video in court and said: “It is grossly offensive, it stuns me that anyone should think it is a joke.

“My immediate reaction is that there is a clear distinction to be made between an off-hand remark and the amount of effort that is required to train a dog like that, I actually feel sorry for the dog.

“In many ways, the bit I found most offensive was the repetition of ‘gas the Jews’ rather than the dog itself.”