- British historian David Irving was charged Tuesday with
violating an Austrian law that makes Holocaust denial in this formerly
Nazi-ruled nation a crime.
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- Irving, a controversial Third Reich scholar who has claimed
that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of 6 million
Jews, is accused of giving two speeches in 1989 in which he denied the
existence of Nazi gas chambers during World War II, prosecutor Otto Schneider
said.
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- He was arrested Nov. 11 in the southern province of Styria
on a warrant issued in 1989. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
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- Irving, 67, remains in custody in Vienna. His attorney,
Elmar Kresbach, said he would decide how to proceed after discussing the
charges with his client Wednesday.
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- A detention hearing will be held Friday to determine
whether Irving should be held for up to four more weeks, Schneider said.
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- After his arrest, Irving supporters posted a statement
on his Web site saying he was detained while on a one-day visit to Vienna,
where they said he had been invited "by courageous students to address
an ancient university association."
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- Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading
anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including
"Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
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- Besides his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about
the Holocaust, he also has been quoted as saying there was "not one
shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution"
to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massive scale.
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- The right-wing historian has said he does not deny Jews
were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish
concentration camp deaths.
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- He has questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers
to exterminate the Jews and has claimed that the numbers of those who perished
are far lower than those generally accepted. He also contends that most
Jews who died at Auschwitz did so from diseases like typhus, not gas poisoning.
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- Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the
years. In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the equivalent of $6,000 for
publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.
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- In March, more than 200 historians from around the world
petitioned the C-SPAN television network to cancel a project that would
have included a speech by Irving as a counterpoint to a lecture by Deborah
Lipstadt, a Holocaust expert.
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- Irving once sued Lipstadt for libel for calling him a
Holocaust denier. The British court handling the case in 2000 declared
that Irving could be labeled as such, and that he was anti-Semitic, racist
and misrepresented historical information.
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