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The court said it had counted 14 instances on Zuendel's Internet homepage where he denied the historical facts of the Holocaust and incited anti-Semitism.
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MANNHEIM (EJP)--- A German court on Thursday sentenced
Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel to five years in jail for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis killed millions of Jews.
Judges of a court in the south-western city of Mannheim gave the 67-year-old the maximum sentence under German law after finding that Zuendel had repeatedly denied the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis in World War II.
The court said it had counted 14 instances on Zuendel’s Internet homepage where he denied the historical facts of the Holocaust and incited anti-Semitism.
Zuendel wrote a book titled "The Hitler We Loved and Why," described the Nazi leader as a "man of peace" and helped to disseminate a range of anti-Semitic literature.
He lived in Canada for several decades and fell foul of authorities there for his anti-Semitic opinions. He was extradited to Germany in 2005.
The two years he spent behind bars in Canada awaiting extradition will not be deducted from the new five-year sentence.
His trial was marked by upheaval after one of his five lawyers had to be replaced after questioning the Holocaust in arguments in his client’s defense.
International commission
In his closing remarks, Zuendel had called on the court to establish an international commission of experts to examine the Holocaust.
He said that if the findings of the commission proved him wrong, "I will apologise publicly in a press conference to Jews, Israelis and the entire world."
The German government, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is trying to convince all other member states of the bloc to make denying the Holocaust an EU-wide crime.
But the 27 EU justice ministers remained divided at a meeting Thursday in Brussels where the issue was raised for the first time in two years.
«The positions have not really changed. Germany has got into in a very difficult undertaking," one diplomat said.
While France, Spain, Belgium, Austria and Germany are already punishing Holocaust denial, others like Great-Britain or the Scandinavian countries are opposed to any attempt to limit freedom of expression.
The Mannheim court is currently holding similar proceedings, one against extreme-right wing German extremist Germar Rudolf and another against Belgian Holocaust denier Siegfried Verbeke.
