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Antonio Rüdiger at national team training

Photo: Marc Schueler / Student / IMAGO

After an Instagram post in which Julian Reichelt brought Antonio Rüdiger close to IS, the national player and the German Football Association (DFB) are taking legal action against the ex-Bild boss Julian Reichelt.

Rüdiger filed a criminal complaint with the Berlin public prosecutor's office, and the DFB also reported the case to the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) of the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor's Office. The sid news agency had this confirmed by both sides. However, the news agency did not mention Reichelt's name. The “Bild” newspaper first reported on the advertisements.

Insult and sedition

Rüdiger feels vilified and slandered for an Instagram photo that he published at the beginning of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. The SID has submitted his criminal complaint to the Berlin public prosecutor's office: It relates to allegations of insult or slander, inflammatory insults and incitement to hatred.

In the picture, the 31-year-old is pointing upwards with his index finger. At the weekend, Reichelt wrote, among other things, about the photo on the index finger as a clear sign of Islamism." After the advertisements became known, Reichelt accused Rüdiger and the DFB of "intimidation methods."

»Classified as unproblematic in terms of public safety«

When asked by sid, Rüdiger from Real Madrid did not want to comment on Monday evening. His lawyers told “Bild” that he was “as a convinced believer, a peace-loving person” who rejected any kind of violence. To interpret the gesture as an “Islamist greeting” is “wrong, shortened and deliberately polarizing.” It is the Tawheed gesture, which essentially means: "There is no god but Allah."

The Federal Ministry of the Interior also announced that the so-called Tawhid finger should be “understood as a confession of faith and is therefore classified as unproblematic with regard to public safety.” This applies regardless of the fact “that Islamist groups appropriate this symbol and misuse it for their own purposes.”

bbr/sid