Posted on 02/15/2007 10:57:59 PM PST by Muentzer2005
A German neo-Nazi publisher was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews.
Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts ...
"You might as well argue that the sun rises in the west, but you cannot change that the Holocaust has been proven," he said, referring to Zündel's work Did Six Million Really Die? The prosecution accused him of using "pseudo-scientific methods" in an attempt to overturn the accepted facts on the Holocaust.
But campaigners for Zündel, 67, said he was a peaceful advocate of the right to free speech who was being denied that right. His supporters filled the courtroom.
At the close of the trial Zündel - who also wrote The Hitler We Loved and Why, and has described Hitler as "a decent and very peaceful man" - asked the court in Mannheim to set up an international commission of historians to explore the Holocaust. He said he wanted "hard facts" and not just witness statements, and that if the commission could prove Jews were gassed he would "hold a press conference at which I would publicly apologise to Jews, Israelis and the world".
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
What do you want to bet he is offered an honorary doctorate and job at an American university upon his release?
Europe has much to learn about freedom of speech from the USA.
I was wondering just that! Arrested for his thoughts? As if jailtime is going to remove it!
I wonder if there's something else to it...
In a real warped way, I'm always proud to see a small band of skin-heads marching down the street with a few guys in hoods, etc. "What a great country" I think, that even idiots like these have the right to march down the street. (With the proper permits etc. and if they keep from breaking windows, etc.)
I agree with you.
No matter how much I despise holocaust deniers I think freedom of speech should be protected.
The EU is slowly turning into a totalitarian state.
Exactly. Germany in this case appears to be acting like, well, like a bunch of Nazis.
It seems to me that Zundel has slandered many people by writing that their reports of the Holocaust were phony. The German court was right to punish him for that.
Or, come to think of it...
The Canadians won't extradite a murderer to the US if he might be executed, but they're perfectly happy to extradite a man to Germany so he can spend the next several years as a political prisoner for the crime of writing a book.
Five years for slander?
How many people in the US would be in jail by now?
They're turning this guy into a 'martyr'.
Well done Germany!
Please, slander (or in this case, libel) is the proper subject of a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution. While the German court was "right" to punish him inasmuch as it acted consistently with German law on the matter, German speech law violates the rights of the people of Germany to say what they wish without wondering if the government approves of it or not. You'd think people who experienced tyranny so recently in their history would value their liberty more than that.
Personally I think holocaust deniers are knuckleheads, but putting them in jail for it is just plain over the top.
Personally, I would like to imprison all of the anti-war mother sheehan's of the nation. I'd like to put all of ANSWER, Code Pinko, etc, behind bars for at least 5 years.
The problem, of course, is that little thing we have here called a constitution, which protects freedom of speech.
Stupid German tricks like this can only lead to more infringement on the right to think whatever the heck we want to.
Using a technicality to criminilize speech that you disagree with is still sleazy. Holocaust deniers should be mocked heartily, but not imprisoned. Europe is retarded.
It's been noted that a lie, repeated often enough, becomes accepted as truth. There are people who would like to rewrite Germany's history and denying the Holocaust would be beneficial to them.
As we have learned from history, if indeed we have, ideas have consequences. A future generation of Germans, having learned a different version of Nazi history than the one we are familiar with, might make the same mistakes their predecessors made, with similar consequences.
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