2 charged for Holocaust denial

2006-04-18 22:26

Berlin - German prosecutors say they have charged a German far-right activist, extradited from the United States, and a Belgian man, handed over by the Netherlands, with incitement for allegedly denying the Holocaust.

On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western city of Mannheim said Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke were accused of "systematically" denying or playing down the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in documents and on the internet, and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. It carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment

Rudolf, 41, published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He was deported to Germany from the US in November, to serve a 14-month prison sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges.

Verbeke, 64, was arrested in the Netherlands and also extradited to Germany in November.

Prosecutors in Mannheim are leading a similar, but unrelated case, against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last year.

- AP