Gottfried Küssel, former leader of the now-banned neo-Nazi group VAPO (Volkstreuen Außerparlamentarischen Opposition or Extra-parliamentary Opposition Faithful to the Nation), was sentenced to nine years in prison, while two others, identified as Felix Binder and Wilhelm Anderle, received terms of seven years and four and a half years respectively. All three posted information on the neo-Nazi website alpen-donau.info, which was shut down in March 2011. Since the servers for the site were based in the United States, Austrian authorities had to get American cooperation. All three individuals were first arrested in April 2011.
Küssel was convicted despite the fact that he denied any wrongdoing and told the court he had abandoned neo-Nazi ideology after serving a six-year jail term in the 1990s for spreading Nazi propaganda. In 1993, he was imprisoned for disputing the official account of the Holocaust and questioning the authenticity of the diary of Anne Frank, and in February 2005, he was fined €360 for possessing illegal weapons after he was found to won a number of daggers and bayonets, which contravened a weapons ban placed on him in 1982. Küssel’s attorney, Michael Dohr, said he would appeal against his latest conviction. “I had expected an acquittal because of the very thin evidence. There was only circumstantial evidence, not more,” he said.
