Dylan Investigated
For Remarks

The 72-year-old legend was served notice of the investigation in November. In France, being placed under judicial investigation means authorities are taking a complaint seriously but that it won’t necessarily go further.

The investigation resulted from a complaint by the Council of Croats in France (CRICCF) and followed a 2012 interview Dylan gave to Rolling Stone.

In the interview, he compared the relationship between Jews and Nazis to that of Serbs and Croats.

He was apparently trying to share his thoughts about U.S. history and the country’s racial divide.

“Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that,” he reportedly said. “If you got a slave master or [Ku Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

During World War II, the Croatian Ustasha fascist movement killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and others.

Croats and Serbs also fought each other during the breakup of Yugoslavia, in a 1991-95 war that left about 20,000 dead.

It’s not the first time this year Dylan has been under a cloud in France. In May, the UK’s Guardian reported Dylan was passed over for the Légion Of Honour, one of the country’s top honours, because of his anti-war activism and the fact he’s smoked marijuana.