Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Thirteen months after being jailed in Austria for statements denying the Holocaust, the British historian David Irving has been freed

Mark Landler:

Thirteen months after being jailed in Austria for statements denying the Holocaust, the British historian David Irving was freed Wednesday by a court in Vienna, which ruled that he could serve the remainder of his prison sentence at home on probation.

Noting that he made the statements "a long time ago, 17 years," the appeals court said it did not expect Irving, 68, to repeat the offense, and was confident he would leave Austria immediately. His lawyer, Herbert Schaller, said Irving hoped to fly to Britain on Thursday.

Denying the existence of the Holocaust is a crime in Austria, which was part of the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945. But the appeals court turned down a request by prosecutors to extend Irving's three-year sentence, instead reducing it to two years and, in effect, setting him free.

The decision drew criticism inside and outside Austria. Some Austrian commentators noted that the court's presiding judge, Ernest Maurer, has close ties to the Freedom Party, a rightist organization with a history of appealing to anti-foreign and anti-Jewish sentiment.

Irving, a prolific author of books about World War II and Nazi Germany who cultivated a second career as a globe-trotting naysayer about the extent of Nazi atrocities, was arrested in southern Austria in November 2005 while on his way to speak to a right-wing student group.

The charges against him dated back to 1989, when Irving gave a series of speeches in Austria in which he was reported to have denied there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.

Though Irving disavowed some of his most inflammatory assertions during his trial and acknowledged that the Nazis had murdered millions of Jews, a lower court sentenced him to three years in prison without probation — a sentence that was viewed as quite severe.

"Throwing someone in jail for three years for something he said 17 years ago is intolerable," Schaller said in an interview. "As an Englishman, he couldn't believe he would be imprisoned for that."

Austrian Court Frees Holocaust Denier Irving

Irving wins appeal on Holocaust denial in Austria

David Irving Free After 13 Months in Jail

Holocaust denier Irving freed in Vienna

Holocaust denier to be released early

David Irving Freed (?)

David Irving released - good!

2 Comments:

At 11:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Look, don't be too hard on Austria for the three years. They really have no choice in the matter. And its not just Austria. All those little countries in Eastern Europe, Switzerland, etc., they all have to bow down, put up their obligatory Holocaust Museums and Memorials, and worship multiculturalism and diversity ... or else. I is the price of living in the West these days. Eternally confess your race guilt and your evil nature for not doing mroe about the Holocaust or you won't get into Europe or will get extorted, like all the people of Switzerland.

 
At 1:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Amazing how so many countries are willing to give up the right to free speech just to pander to troublesome minorities.

 

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