A court in Nice gave Atal a suspended prison sentence for reposting a video that the 27-year-old said he did not watch in full before sharing.

A French court has sentenced Algerian footballer Youcef Atal to an eight-month suspended prison sentence for posting on social media about the war in Gaza.

The Nice Criminal Court said on Wednesday that a video Atal reposted on social media in October provoked hatred on religious grounds.

Additionally, the soccer player, who plays for Ligue 1 club Nice, was fined 45,000 euros ($49,000).

The comments in question came from a video by preacher Mahmoud al-Hasanat that Atal posted to his 3.2 million Instagram followers five days after the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7.

After speaking about the children Israel killed in its retaliatory attacks on Gaza, al-Hasanat reportedly made an anti-Jewish remark and called on God to “guide the hand” of retaliating Palestinians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera was unable to confirm the contents of the Instagram post, but Atal quickly deleted it and apologized for it.

In the three months of Israel’s war on Gaza, more than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children.

When Atal shared the video, he was in his home country with the Algerian national team. He withdrew it the next day when Nice warned him that it was likely to cause controversy.

The 27-year-old also apologized, saying he would “never support a message of hate” and that he condemned violence “no matter where in the world.”

During his court hearing in December, Atal apologized again, saying he had wanted to send a “message of peace” and had not watched the entire 35-second video before releasing it.

But that convinced neither prosecutors nor plaintiffs.

“Sharing a video means being part of its message and giving it visibility,” prosecutor Meggi Choutia said in court.

Atal will also pay for details of his conviction to be published in the regional newspaper Nice-Matin and the national newspaper Le Monde.

Nice suspended Atal from playing “until further notice” while he received a seven-match ban in the Professional Football League (LFP), which has now expired.

He was before too imprisoned was convicted by French authorities in November over the post and released on bail of 80,000 euros ($87,500) and placed under judicial supervision pending trial.

However, he played three times for the Algerian national team, is in their squad for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations and was supported in his home country.

The Nice player is one of them several soccer players who have been criticized or punished for their social media posts about the war in Gaza.

After the French football star Karim Benzema France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin criticized “unjust bombings that spare neither women nor children” and accused him – without evidence – of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, in a social media post about Israel’s attack on Gaza. A French senator also called for Benzema to be stripped of previous football awards and French citizenship.