A Belgian Holocaust denier has been arrested in Amsterdam by the Dutch authorities on racism charges.

Siegfried Verbeke was taken into custody on 4 August when he arrived at Amsterdam city’s Schiphol airport.

In July 2004, Germany had issued a European warrant for his arrest for alleged racism and xenophobia, both of which are crimes under German law.

It is alleged that Verbeke had used an internet site to express doubts about the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during WWII.

A co-founder of the extreme-right Vlaams Blok party (now called Vlaams Belang), in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, Verbeke has run for more than 25 years the Antwerp-based Free Historical Research organisation, active in spreading books and leaflets negating the Holocaust.

Prior to this, he led a paramilitary neo-nazi organization, called “Vlaamse Militanten Orde” (for “Flemish Militant Order”)
Convicted in Belgium in 2003, together with his brother Herbert, by an Antwerp court for Holocaust denial and racism, an appeal court toughened a previous sentence and condemned Verbeke to one year imprisonment. His civil and political rights were withdrawn for a 1O-year period.

The court stressed the Verbeke’s “contempt towards the enormous suffering provoked by the Nazi crimes which he tries to minimize in a pseudo-scientific way.”

Criminal record

Verbeke also has a criminal record in the Netherlands, where the highest court convicted him on similar charges in 1997 for having questioned the veracity of the Anne Frank memories book.
Although the Belgian authorities last year refused the extradition of Verbeke to Germany, his lawyer, Piet Noe, told the Dutch radio that his client’s extradition was likely, even on an accelerated procedure.
The Dutch Justice Department is to decide within six weeks whether to extradite Verbeke.