VIENNA,
November 17, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – British
historian David Irving has been arrested in Austria on denying the
Holocaust, an interior ministry spokesman said on Thursday, November
17.
Irving
was arrested near the town of Hartberg in the southern province of
Styria under a warrant issued in 1989, Reuters quoted interior
ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia as saying.
"He
is on remand in Vienna," Gollia said.
Asked
what Irving had been arrested for, Gollia said: "It is to do with
... Holocaust denial."
The
spokesman declined to comment on whether or when he would be charged.
Denying
the holocaust is a crime in Austria which carries a sentence of 1-10
years.
Sympathy
A
British High Court ruling in 2000 rejecting Irving's libel action
against an American professor and her publishers declared Irving
"an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".
During
the trial Irving, who specializes in Nazi military history, was
accused of sympathizing with Adolph Hitler and of holding racist views
towards Jews and blacks.
"He
has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favored light, principally in
relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment
of Jews," Justice Charles Gray wrote in his judgment.
Irving
denied the accusations, although he admitted he had made racist
remarks towards Jews and blacks.
According
to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Holocaust refers to "systematic
state-sponsored killing of Jewish men, women, and children and others
by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II."
The
commonly used figure for the number of Jewish victims is six million.
However,
the figure was questioned by some historians and intellectuals,
chiefly French Muslim author Roger Garaudy.
