Holocaust denier Irving is jailed

[Dave Monroe]

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. 

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.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm

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