Posted on 02/20/2006 12:58:55 PM PST by aculeus
British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison.
He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989.
"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court in the Austrian capital.
Irving appeared stunned by the sentence, and told reporters: "I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal."
An unidentified onlooker told him: "Stay strong!".
Irving's lawyer said he considered the verdict "a little too stringent".
"I would say it's a bit of a message trial," said Elmar Kresbach.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK's Holocaust Educational Trust welcomed the verdict. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism dressed up as intellectual debate. It should be regarded as such and treated as such," Ms Pollock told the BBC News website.
But the author and academic Deborah Lipstadt, who Irving unsuccessfully sued for libel in the UK in 2000 over claims that he was a Holocaust denier, said she was dismayed.
"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth," she told the BBC News website.
Fears that the court case would provoke right-wing demonstrations and counter-protests did not materialise, the BBC's Ben Brown at the court in Vienna said.
Irving arrived in the court room handcuffed, wearing a blue suit, and carrying a copy of Hitler's War, one of many books he has written on the Nazis, and which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
Irving was arrested in Austria in November, on a warrant dating back to 1989, when he gave a speech and interview denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
He was stopped by police on a motorway in southern Austria, where he was visiting to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity. He has been held in custody since then.
'I've changed'
During the one-day trial, he was questioned by the prosecutor and chief judge, and answered questions in fluent German.
He admitted that in 1989 he had denied that Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews. He said this is what he believed, until he later saw the personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust.
"I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now," Irving told the court.
"The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."
In the past, he had claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little, if anything, about the Holocaust, and that the gas chambers were a hoax.
COUNTRIES WITH LAWS AGAINST HOLOCAUST DENIAL Austria Belgium Czech Republic France Germany Israel Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Switzerland
The judge in his 2000 libel trial declared him "an active Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist".
On Monday, before the trial began, he told reporters: "I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views.
"History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989."
Asked how many Jews were killed by Nazis, he replied: "I don't know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust."
Of his guilty plea, he told reporters: "I have no choice."
He said it was "ridiculous" that he was being tried for expressing an opinion.
"Of course it's a question of freedom of speech... I think within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian statute book," he said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2006/02/20 20:19:07 GMT
© BBC MMVI
Blah Blah Blah...
I get so tired of the movie theatre dribble.
That has nothing to do with free speech.
It's reckless endangerment.
What's next? Freedom of speech for holocaust victims only?
You had to bring him up! He might be the only person I would want to send to prison for what he writes and says.
I agree. It's an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. He's not advocating genocide or any harm to anyone. I do wish people would stop being so hypersensitive about the Holocaust.
Do we also arrest members of "The Flat Earth Society?"
> Such deniers are reasonably analogized to someone
> falsely shouting, "Fire!" in a crowded theater just
> to witness the stampede, mayhem and near-certain
> human injury.
How so? No-one stampeded when they heard Irving's nonsence; no-one has been injured by his communicating his ideas. And before you say, well, he encourages Neo-Nazis, remember that shouting fire in a theatre will produce injury by virtue of people's automatic reactions; anyone who injures someone after hearing Irving is doing so with full moral responsbilty for a premeditated action.
He wasn't extradited. He went to Austria on his own accord and was arrested on an outstanding warrant.
Europe is nearly as dangerous as the Middle East when it comes to freedom of speech and conscience, and the privilege of being a jerk, like this guy, is a state monopoly.
I fear Europeans will never learn about free speech. They just don't have the guts for it, but I'm sure their new Moslem masters will help them work things out by bowing their heads 5 times a day toward Mecca.
That makes it right?
He was arrested for something he said 17 years ago!
But thats the Euroweenies for you.
It's not an accident they produced Hitler.
"Yes, I saw that idiot in an interview on Irish TV recently, what a moonbat!!"
He's gone so far off the deep end on being "pro-Palestinian" that he reportedly wrote the foreword for some neo-Nazi screed in France, then claimed he didn't know what the book was about.
Until then, you're mischaracterizing what's happened here.
You're your own microcosm here. You have freedom of speech, and despite your being in the wrong, no one is abridging your right to say it. All is still well with the world.
HF
All that happens here is, as so many have said, the state creates a martyr for these Nazi b*sta*rds and brings us nearer the day when the Islamofascists will take over Western Europe and we will have to nuke them back to the stoneage to save ourselves.
So, it's a really serious issue to shut these guys up.
Better that this nonsense is out in the open, where it can be countered, than that it be forced underground where they can grieve their martyrs and grow in size.
However, I think jailing Irving is a mistake. It will only make him a martyr among those - including the Islamists - who deny not only the Holocaust but other realities.
Liberals, Muzzies and Nazis seem to be willfully oblivious to the fact that they are all the one!!
"Liberals, Muzzies and Nazis seem to be willfully oblivious to the fact that they are all the one!!"
That does appear to be changing, what with imams getting the royal welcome in Cuba and Venezuela these days. Strange times. The truth will out, I guess.
Yes.
Ernst Zundel is in prison in Germany for books he published (not wrote) in Canada and the United States. The United States deported him to Canada (He's a Canadian citizen, married to a United States citizen), where he was immediately imprisoned without trial and held in solitary confinemen. When he finally stood trial before Canada's Hate Crimes tribunal, he was told that "Truth is not a defense" and was then deported to Germany where he had been found guilty in absentia for denying the holocaust.
I think you can throw Castro and Chavez into the same category!
"I think you can throw Castro and Chavez into the same category!"
They do love to tart themselves up with fancy dress uniforms, don't they?
Do you have a cite for that?
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