Communicated on 3 November 2016
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 70693/11
Klaus Günter ANNEN
against Germany
lodged on 26 October 2011
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns a civil injunction and an order to pay compensation. The applicant is a campaigner against the right to abortion. He operates an anti-abortion website which includes a list of “abortion doctors” whose full names and addresses are mentioned. The German courts prohibited the applicant from continuing labelling abortions such as those performed by a named doctor murder on his website. The applicant was further ordered to pay compensation for violation of the doctor’s personality rights.
QUESTIONS tO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been a violation of the applicant’s right to freedom of expression contrary to Article 10 of the Convention?
2. Should the present case be distinguished from the Court’s judgment Annen v. Germany, no. 3690/10, 26 November 2015 in view of the circumstance
- that the Karlsruhe Regional Court took it as a fact that the doctor was Jewish – whereas the question was immaterial in the Karlsruhe Court of Appel’s view – and
- that according to the Karlsruhe Regional Court the applicant considered it continuously appropriate during the first instance proceedings to compare abortions to the Holocaust?
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy