Austrian writer on trial for denying Holocaust

[Алекса]

Austrian writer on trial for denying Holocaust

The Associated Press
Published: April 20th, 2009 12:45 AM
Last Modified: April 20th, 2009 12:45 AM

VIENNA - An Austrian writer has gone on trial for allegedly defending and promoting aspects of the Nazi era and publicly denying the Holocaust.

Gerd Honsik faces up to 20 years' imprisonment if convicted of denying the occurrence of the Nazis' systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II.

The 68-year-old author also was being tried on charges of promoting Nazi propaganda. Both are crimes in Austria.

Honsik wrote a book, "Hitler Innocent?," in which he attempted to justify some Nazi-era crimes. He was originally convicted in 1992 but fled to Spain, where authorities arrested him in October 2007.

Honsik went on trial Monday in Vienna on new charges for articles he allegedly wrote and circulated on the Internet.

[bogsvarog]

Austrian Holocaust denier sentenced to five years in jail

Notorious Austrian Holocaust denier Gerd Honsik was sentenced to five years in prison Monday by a Vienna court that found him guilty of spreading National Socialist ideology.


While living in Spain from the early 1990s to evade a previous Austrian prison sentence, the neo-Nazi had continued to publish National Socialist ideology in a magazine and other venues.

"He is one of the ideological leaders of the neo-Nazi scene," prosecutor Stefan Apostol said Friday, alleging that Honsik had also passed out his publications at schools.

Both the prosecution and the defendant plan to appeal the verdict and sentence, Austrian press agency APA reported.

The 67-year-old defendant said he rejects "the doctrine which demonizes National Socialism," but claimed he was not a National Socialist himself.

Honsik, who wrote the book Acquittal for Hitler? in 1988, defended himself by arguing that he did not deny the existence of all the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.

After his lawyer, Herbert Schaller, pointed out that it was not Honsik but "fine and righteous foreigners" who had first denied the existence of gas chambers, the prosecutor said he would consider whether to also indict Schaller under Austria's law banning National Socialist activities.

In 1992, an Austrian court passed an 18-month prison term against Honsik for denying the crimes committed by Hitler's regime. Before starting his sentence, Honsik fled to Spain, but he was eventually extradited in 2007.

Another prominent Holocaust denier, the British writer David Irving, received a sentence of two years in prison and one year of probation from Austrian courts in 2006.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1081556.html