On Wednesday, Lithuanian Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė signed a document formally requesting the parliament to strip MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, leader of the Nemunas Dawn party, of his legal immunity.
The request is based on a ruling from the Vilnius Regional Court as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. He faces charges over his Facebook posts about Israel and Jewish people.
Under the Constitution, a member of the Seimas cannot be prosecuted or have their liberty otherwise restricted without the parliament's consent.
Earlier this year, the Constitutional Court ruled that Žemaitis broke his oath as an MP and grossly violated the Constitution by making anti-Semitic statements. An impeachment process was started but never completed because he resigned from the Seimas to run in this year's presidential and parliamentary elections.
He was re-elected to the Seimas in October.
Žemaitaitis previously said he expected to be acquitted of the charges and planned to waive his immunity to speed up the legal process.
Further reading
According to recently adopted legal amendments, if an MP does not object to the prosecutor general's request to lift their immunity, they should immediately make a public statement during the same sitting, stating that they agree to waive their immunity.
In this case, the Seimas does not need to set up a special commission to examine the prosecutor's request, and a resolution on the lawmaker's prosecution is adopted immediately if more than half of all MPs vote in favour.
Žemaitaitis is being charged for publicly ridiculing, expressing contempt for and inciting hatred against a group of people and its members based on their ethnicity, as well as grossly trivialising the Holocaust.
In his Facebook posts of May and June 2023, Žemaitaitis accused Jews of deporting and killing Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation. Commenting on the news of Israel's demolition of a Palestinian school, he likened Israel's actions to Russia’s war in Ukraine. He also cited an anti-Semitic rhyme about killing Jews, claiming it is "no wonder such saying appear".
The politician denies the charges, saying he was not speaking about Jews and was only criticising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In November, prosecutors launched two more pre-trial investigations into Žemaitaitis’ statements – one for allegedly inciting hatred by calling for people to light candles outside the home of Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first post-independence leader, and another for potentially defaming Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, the outgoing prime minister.
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