Brigitte Bardot fined £12,000 for racial hatred after claiming Muslims are destroying France



French film star Brigitte Bardot was today convicted of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France.

A Paris court also handed down a €15,000 ($11,920) fine against the former screen siren turned animal rights campaigner.

A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter Bardot, 73, sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.



Fined: Brigitte Bardot, at court Last year, was today forced to pay £12,000 for inciting racial hatred

The remarks by the star, who helped popularise the bikini during her heyday in the 1950s, were published in her foundation's quarterly journal.

In the December 2006 letter to Mr Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."

The actress, who is most famous for her sex kitten role in And God Created Woman, was referring to the Muslim feast of Eid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep.



Bardot's lawyer, Francois-Xavier Kelidjian, said he would talk to her about the possibility of an appeal.

"She is tired of this type of proceedings," he said.



Sex symbol: Brigitte Bardot is pictured in 1950s France with a deer

"She has the impression that people want to silence her. She will not be silenced in her defense of animal rights."



The court also ordered Bardot to pay €1,000 (£795) in damages to MRAP, as well as one symbolic euro to two other anti-racism groups.

French anti-racism laws prevent inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious or racial grounds.



Bardot had been convicted four times previously for inciting racial hatred.

She was first fined in 1997 for her comments published in Le Figaro newspaper.

A year later she was convicted for making a statement about the growing number of mosques in France "while our church bells fall silent".

Star: Bardot in And God Created Women in 1956 alongside Curt Jurgens

In 1998 she was convicted for making a statement about the growing number of mosques in France.

In a book she wrote in 1999, called "Le Carre de Pluton" (Pluto's Square), she again criticised Muslim sheep slaughter and was fined 30,000 francs £3,000).

In a 2001 article named, Open Letter to My Lost France, she lamented: "...my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims."



In her 2003 book, A Scream in the Silence, she warned of the “Islamicisation of France”, and said of Muslim immigration: “Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own."

She was fined €5,000 (then worth £2,900)

Fame: Bardot with Sean Connery while filming Edward Dmytryk's 1968 western Shalako