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In 2006, Gerald Toben (R on the picture with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) attended the revisionist Iranian Holocaust Conference in Tehran.
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LONDON (AFP-EJP)---An alleged Australian Holocaust denier was greeted with a Nazi salute from the public gallery Friday, as he appeared in court as part of extradition proceedings.
Gerald Toben, 64, was detained on arrival at London's Heathrow Airport on Wednesday under a European Union (EU) arrest warrant issued by Germany, which accuses him of anti-Semitism.
On Friday he appeared for a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, where his lawyer suggested that his extradition to Germany would be unlawful.
As he left the court, Toben smiled briefly to a group of supporters in the public gallery, one of whom raised his arm in a Nazi salute, according to Britain's Press Association.
| The arrest warrant issued by Germany |
The warrant describes the conduct alleged against Toben: "From 2000 up to this day, worldwide internet publications of anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature. Deliberately contrary to the historical truth, the said publications deny, approve or play down above all the mass murder of the Jews planned and implemented by the National-Socialist rulers. The offender is committing the acts in Australia, Germany and in other countries.” I surmised last week that this was alleged to amount to “racism and xenophobia”, one of the offences on the so-called European framework list. It is indeed, but the conduct is also said to come within an even more vague framework offence, that of “computer-related crime”.
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Speaking after the hearing, his lawyer Kevin Lowry-Mullins said: "The issue is this; should someone who has committed an offence in a foreign country, but doesn't commit an offence in the UK, be extradited to that country?
"He is being requested by the German government to be extradited back to Germany for an offence which is not a criminal offence in this country," he added.
"This is not about Holocaust denial. It is about the process of extradition law in this country."
District Judge Daphne Wickham refused to hear the lawyer’s application, pointing out that the case had been listed only for a decision on bail.
A public prosecutor in Mannheim, Germany, is seeking Toben’s extradition on charges of “instigation to race hatred, insult and reviling the memory of the dead”. The charges go back to 2004.
When the hearing opened, Melanie Cumberland, instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service on behalf of the German authorities, told the judge that Germany opposed bail for Toben. He had a "strong incentive to flee", she said, and no bail conditions would be sufficient.
Toben -- who also uses the first name Frederick -- faces charges of publishing material on the Internet "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature" which denies, approves of, or plays down the Holocaust.
The warrant claims the offences were committed in Australia, Germany and other countries.
Toben is to appear in court again on October 17.
