KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- British neo-Nazi historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust in a speech made in Austria in 1989.
The group of eight jurors unanimously decided that Irving was guilty, despite the 67-year-old's pleas that he had changed his views since then.
"I am not a Holocaust denier... I have never been a Holocaust denier and I am very angry when people call me a Holocaust denier," Irving, a copy of his book "Hitler's War" in his hands, on Monday told reporters before the case opened in Vienna.
That was news to the jurors, however, as Irving has gathered questionable stardom with the neo-Nazi scene around the world for his apologetic books on Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and speeches denying the existence of the Holocaust, two of which he made in Austria 17 years ago and which led to an arrest warrant. Irving has in the past said Jews did not die in gas chambers, but of diseases such as typhus.
In the courtroom, according to German public radio Deutschlandfunk, Irving said he had changed his views on the Holocaust and was no longer denying it. Confronted by the prosecution with some of his own comments and writings, he said: "Those views are wrong. That I have learned over the years." Irving added he did not deny the Holocaust, but doubted only certain details of it.
Irving was arrested by police while driving through southern Austria last November. He has since remained in custody in a prison in Graz.
The renewed verdict means he will have to remain in prison for at least three years without parole. That would give him some time to complete his memoirs, called "Irving's War," which he is said to have been working on while in prison.
Under Austrian law, publicly diminishing, denying or justifying the Holocaust is a federal crime which carries a prison term of one to 10 years. Fearing a long sentence, Irving may very well have been encouraged to portray himself as a refined historian, experts say.
"I don't think Mr. Irving has changed his views," Hajo Funke, extremism expert at Berlin's Free University, Monday told United Press International. "Absolutely nothing speaks for such a turnaround, and tactical switches he has always made. He is no historian. He is somebody who has always manipulated facts."
In 2000, Funke testified at the London libel trial Irving launched against U.S. Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt; Irving argued Lipstadt libeled him in one of her books. The British historian, author of some 30 questionable books, lost the case and was officially branded an active anti-Semitic Holocaust denier in the verdict.
Austria and Germany, where Irving is also persona non grata, have the toughest anti-Nazi laws in the world.
In Germany, depicting Nazi iconography, such as the swastika, is illegal. So is the sale of Nazi memorabilia and any group that comes close to Hitler's National Socialist Work Party, which rose to power in 1933.
Such laws stand in contrast to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants the right to freedom of speech.
The laws have also come under the microscope in Germany, mainly in connection with former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's attempt to ban the German National Democratic Party, or NPD, a right-wing group.
Critics of the laws argue that by outlawing such movements, one makes them more attractive.
In the United States, freedom of speech is seen as a basic right, and extremist views are tolerated under Voltaire's premise: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
That simply isn't possible in Austria, and especially not in Germany, Funke said.
"Our whole democratic development is based on these laws," he told UPI. "As long as Holocaust survivors are alive, there is no way to question these laws. We owe that to the survivors, it's our moral duty."
