DAVID Irving jailed for denying the Holocaust happened. They ain't got no stinking first amendment in Austria.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18232183%255E601,00.html

Irving jailed over Holocaust denials Roger Boyes, Vienna February 22, 2006

DAVID Irving, the far-Right British historian, sat stunned and open-mouthed yesterday when an Austrian court found him guilty of denying the Holocaust and sentenced him to three years in jail.

"I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal," Irving, 67, said as he was bundled out of the Vienna courtroom by armed anti-riot police.

Irving had pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust in two speeches in Austria in 1989. He was arrested when he re-entered the country, where it is a crime to deny the Holocaust, last November, and had been in custody since.

During his seven-hour trial, Irving sought to convince the jury that he had changed his mind and now acknowledged the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court in fluent German, adding that he changed his mind in 1991 after coming across personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust, during a speaking tour in Argentina.

"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 any more and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews," he said.

But after handing down his sentence, judge Peter Liebetreu said: "The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law."

One hundred and fifty-eight people have been convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria between 1999 and 2004, but only a handful other than Irving have been imprisoned.

The verdict came amid a furious debate in Europe over freedom of expression, with many defending the media's right to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. The Arabic television station al-Jazeera broadcast the verdict to its Islamic audience.

The sentence struck some observers as excessive, potentially turning the disgraced author into a martyr to the far-right cause.

Anthony Beevor, the military historian, said: "However nauseating, these people should be confronted in debate rather than chucked into jail and turned into martyrs."

The verdict will end for good the career of a man banned from a dozen countries - from Australia to Canada to South Africa - for belittling the murder of the Jews and glorifying the Austrian-born Hitler.

In 2000, Irving was forced into bankruptcy when he unsuccessfully sued Deborah Lipstadt, an American academic who had called him a Holocaust denier. He was ordered to pay pound stg. 3 million ($7.08million) in legal costs and had to sell his Mayfair home.

She said: "He should have been met by the sound of one hand clapping. The one thing he deserves, he really deserves, is obscurity."

Irving's day of drama began when he strode into the Vienna courthouse - where the Nazis once beheaded Austrian resistance fighters - clutching a copy of his book Hitler's War and fuming that it was "ridiculous that I should be standing trial for something I'm supposed to have done 16 years ago".

His grand entry, 20 minutes early, was supposed to seize the initiative in his trial, but Mr Liebetreu did not allow Irving to dominate proceedings. Again and again he encouraged the historian to make a public apology in front of the eight-strong jury, consisting mainly of young women.

Irving's admission that gas chambers did exist at Auschwitz was a retraction of a key phrase for a historian who has always trivialised the Holocaust. He also said that he "regretted using such a strong formulation" when asked about a statement in which he said Holocaust witnesses needed to see a psychiatrist.

And yet there were limits to Irving's remorse. He was adamant that Hitler was not involved in the Holocaust and that he had actually helped Jews.

Those are the views he first set out in Hitler's War, first published in 1977, in which he maintained that Hitler knew nothing of the Nazi slaughter of six million jews until 1943. His admissions failed to impress the prosecutor.

The Times, Reuters

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-21T153237Z_01_L21729059_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AUSTRIA-IRVING.xml

Austria appeals for longer jail term for Irving Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:32 PM GMT Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's state prosecutor filed an appeal on Tuesday to lengthen the three-year jail term given to historian David Irving for denying the Holocaust during a 1989 lecture tour in the country.

Irving had already appealed for a reduction in the sentence in his Vienna criminal court trial on Monday, arguing that he had changed his mind after further research in the past 15 years and now acknowledged that Nazi Germany killed millions of Jews.

Walter Geyer, spokesman for the state prosecutor's office, said it had lodged an appeal to have the sentence increased. The prosecutor had argued that Irving had only pretended to moderate his views to try to escape a jail term.

Geyer said it would be up to Vienna's supreme court to decide whether and by how much the term should be lengthened. A hearing was not likely before the second half of 2006.

Denying the Holocaust in Austria -- which was part of the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945 and contributed a significant number of top Nazi leaders including Adolf Hitler -- is punishable by a prison term of one to 10 years.

Irving, 67, arrested on a 16-year-old warrant during a return visit to Austria last November, said his jail sentence had shocked him, and filed an appeal for it to be shortened as soon as the one-day trial closed on Monday.

He had pleaded guilty, hoping for a suspended sentence. But presiding Judge Peter Liebetreu said the court did not consider the defendant to "have genuinely changed his mind. The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law".

Irving acknowledged denying in 1989 that there was an organised Nazi genocide against Jews and that gas chambers existed, but said he changed his mind in 1991 after reading the personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust.

"The Nazis did murder millions of Jews," he told the court.

Defence lawyer Elmar Kresbach asked the court for leniency because he said Irving thought differently now and posed no threat to a stable Austrian democracy six decades after World War Two.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl said Irving was a serial "falsifier of history" and had been cast as a martyr for free speech by neo-Nazis who would not grant such rights if they were in power.

http://smh.com.au/news/world/jews-split-on-jail-term-for-irving-holocaust-denier/2006/02/21/1140284067577.html

Jews split on jail term for Irving, Holocaust denier Email Print Normal font Large font By Sam Marsden and Kim Pilling in London

JEWISH leaders and historians have welcomed the conviction of the British historian, David Irving, on charges of denying the Holocaust, although some believe his three-year jail sentence is too harsh and could turn him into a martyr for the right.

Irving began his sentence yesterday after admitting a criminal charge of denying that the Nazis sent millions of Jews to the gas chambers.

His lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, said Irving would appeal against the sentence. "I consider the verdict a little too stringent. I would say it's a bit of a message trial."

Irving, 67, insisted during the one-day hearing in Vienna on Monday that he had had a change of heart and he acknowledged the slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II.

He told the jury the Holocaust was "just a fragment of my area of interest" and that "in no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis".

But the historian, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived at court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books - Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

In Britain, the chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Lord Greville Janner, said he was pleased by Irving's conviction. "It is the conviction and not the sentence that matters," he said.

"It sends a clear message to the world that we must not tolerate the denial of the mass murders of the Holocaust.

"The Nazis tried to wipe out an entire people. They murdered every one of my family on the continent, except those who lived in Denmark. We must learn the lessons of the past to build a decent society for the future. Irving's conviction, especially in Austria which was a former Nazi country, is important and appropriate."

The director of the Jewish Information and Media Service, Jonathan Romain, questioned if Irving should have been jailed for the crime.

Dr Romain, the rabbi of Maidenhead synagogue in Berkshire, said: "Personally I prefer to treat him with disdain than with imprisonment.

"The real importance of his trial is to reinforce both the terrible reality of the Holocaust and the determination never again to let it happen to any people."

A British military historian, Anthony Beevor, said: "However nauseating, these people should be confronted in debate rather than chucked into jail and turned into martyrs."

The chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jon Benjamin, said the conviction was a timely reminder at a time when Holocaust denial was gaining currency. "He is a poster boy for many people who have a certain political or philosophical outlook," he said.

Irving was arrested in Austria on November 11 when he arrived to give a lecture to students. He was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime. The charges stemmed from speeches which Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

Irving has faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas in the past.

He has been quoted as saying there was not one shred of evidence that the Nazis carried out their Final Solution on such a scale, and has challenged the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

Irving once famously sued an American historian, Deborah Lipstadt, for libel after she wrote that he was a Holocaust denier. He lost that case. The judge called him an "anti-Semite and racist" who twisted history, and the legal fees of $5.4 million bankrupted him.

Ms Lipstadt said yesterday that while Irving was a poor historian, censorship did not work. "He should be released to return to London and the sound of one hand clapping," she said.


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