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David Irving leaves a court in Vienna. An Austrian appeals court ruled that the convicted British Holocaust-denier, Irving, should be released from prison and serve the remainder of his three-year sentence on probation.he was due to arrive in the UK Thursday evening.
Photo: AFP Copyright 2006
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LONDON (EJP)--- Controversial historian David Irving will not be met by British Police or be placed under any kind of supervision when he arrives back in the UK Thursday evening after being released early from an Austrian prison cell and placed on probation.
The Holocaust denier was due to board an Austrian Airlines flight in Vienna at 5.15pm (4.15 UK time) and arrive back at London Heathrow at 7.40 pm.
Police in Austria will escort him to his plane but the Home Office Thursday afternoon confirmed that no police officers would be at Heathrow to meet him.
Irving was released from an Austrian jail cell after serving a third of a three-year sentence for Holocaust denial, which is banned there.
His release comes after Vienna’s highest court ruled that two thirds of the writer’s jail term should be converted into probation. Since he has already spent more than 13 months behind bars, the ruling means that he was released.
Communal concern
Holocaust campaigners and the Jewish community have reacted with concern following the court’s decision, with Labour peer Lord George Foulkes describing it as "outrageous".
The Austrian Government has issued a deportation notice, and said Irving would not be welcome back in the country again.
But the British Home Office confirmed that, despite Irving technically still being in a probation period, there was no provision for supervising him in the UK under British law.
"There is no legislation that transfers probation orders from one European country to another," a spokeswoman said.
"The Repatriation of Prisoners Act only applies for prisoners who are being transferred from a cell in one country to a cell in another, but not for someone on probation.
"As a result, I don’t believe we will be doing anything - any further enforcement is a matter for the Austrian Government."
Holocaust denial
Irving, 68, was sentenced in February under a 1992 law that applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media".
He has argued that most of those who died at concentration camps, including Auschwitz, succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than execution. Irving welcomed the decision to release him early and said he was "fit and well".
He said: "I’ve been in solitary confinement for 400 days and you can imagine how awful that is."
News conference
Irving is expected to hold a news conference Friday evening in which he will call for an academic boycott of German and Austrian historians until their governments stopped putting historians in prison.
"I was put in prison for three years for expressing an opinion 17 years ago," he said.
Lord Foulkes, a member of the Policy Council of Labour Friends of Israel, said: "It is outrageous that he should be allowed to get away with serving such a relatively short part of his sentence.
"He will, I fear, be able to come out and cause great distress to people by continuing to propagate his false and perverted version of history."
