Holocaust denier arrested in Austria

HARTBERG, Austria, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A writer who claims the Nazi gas chambers were a fiction has been arrested in Austria on a 16-year-old warrant.

David Irving was picked up in Hartberg after police received a tip that he was in the country, the Times of London reported. He had gone to Austria to address a far-right group.

Irving was considered a serious historian of the Nazi era until 1988, when he first emerged as a Holocaust denier. In 2000, he lost a libel suit in London when a judge found that he had falsified history. He has also been fined in Germany.