2 charged for Holocaust denial
18/04/2006 22:26 - (SA)
Berlin - German prosecutors say they have charged a German far-right activist, extradited from the United States, and a Belgian man, handed over by the Netherlands, with incitement for allegedly denying the Holocaust. On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western city of Mannheim said Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke were accused of "systematically" denying or playing down the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in documents and on the internet, and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred.
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. It carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Rudolf, 41, published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was deported to Germany from the US in November, to serve a 14-month prison sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges. Verbeke, 64, was arrested in the Netherlands and also extradited to Germany in November. Prosecutors in Mannheim are leading a similar, but unrelated case, against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last year.
According to SWR.de, a Baden-Württemberg news site, Rudolf and Verbeke are being charged with incitement(Volksverhetzung) under Article 130 of the Federal German Basic Law, in particular with 'antisemitic agitation', and also with insulting and defaming the memory of the dead. The trial is set for the second half of this year in the same court-district as Ernst Zündel is currently undergoing trial.
Just the news for now. Comments later.
Well, I hope this trial finally explodes Germar Rudolf's "scientific credentials" for once and for all.
ReplyDeleteThey probably won't, because Holocaust deniers are great at ignoring the truth, even when it's put right in front of them.
I don't think Rudolf and other thugs should have been prosecuted for denial (although I am not against prosecution for certain types of incitement).
ReplyDeleteI don't think this trial will be helpful because he probably won't be allowed to argue his pseudo-scientific points, and thus they won't be debunked in a court.
It will only matter whether he did deny the Holocaust, not whether he did it for right reasons (no, he didn't do it for right reasons, but I think he won't be allowed to argue about reasons in the first place).
Now, if they allowed something aking to Irving's trial, where experts could debunk him, that, at least, would be useful.
Sure, it is easy enough to conduct a show-trial where experts could debunk him because the defending advocates would risk heresy charges themselves. That is how Rudolf got on the dock himself, doing a scientific investigation on Auschwitz in defense of General Remer.
ReplyDeleteBut any such trial at all, even one with a stacked deck in favor of the Bundestablishment, would be dangerous for the people who desperately need to suppress inquiry into certain matters in the first place. It ain't gonna happen. They are having too much trouble controlling speech and discussion in other countries (and what Germans might therefore hear) to make it work.