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 identify when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” he told the act in the Austrian capital.
Irving appeared stunned by the declare and told reporters: “I’m very shocked and I’m going to appeal.”
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 believe welcomed the verdict. “Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism dressed up as intellectual consider. 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 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 create right-wing demonstrations and did not materialise the BBC’s Ben Brown at the court in Vienna said.
Irving. 67 arrived in the court dwell handcuffed wearing a color conform to 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 furnish a lecture to a far-right student fraternity. He has been held in custody since then.
During the one-day trial he was questioned by the prosecutor and chief adjudicate 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 measure 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 act.
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 adjudicate 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.”
He said it was “” 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.
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