Austria – Holocaust Denier David Irving Sentenced to Three Years In Prison

An Austrian court sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison on Monday for denying the Holocaust during a 1989 stopover in Austria, dismissing his argument that he had changed his views. Irving pleaded guilty, hoping for a suspended sentence, but the Vienna criminal court concluded he was only making a pretence of acknowledging Nazi Germany’s genocide against Jews in order to escape a jail term. “The court did not consider the defendant to have genuinely changed his mind,” presiding judge Peter Liebetreu told the court after pronouncing the sentence. “The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law.” Irving was arrested on a return visit to Austria last November, based on a warrant over lectures and a press interview he made in 1989 in the Alpine republic, where denying the Nazi genocide is a crime punishable by one to 10 years in prison. Irving acknowledged denying in 1989 that Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews but said he changed in 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 anymore and I wouldn’t say that now,” he said. (Reuters)