06 March 2007
German prosecutors have demanded a prison term for the Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf on charges of inciting racial hatred and for denying the Shoah in propaganda on the internet and in various publications. Rudolf, 42, was extradited in November 2005 from the United States and is on trial in the southern German city of Mannheim. He fled his native Germany in 1995 after a court handed him a suspended sentence of 14 months for provoking anti-Semitic sentiment.
Rudolf went on trial on the latest charges last November and told the court that the Holocaust had been "a gigantic fraud." Authorities said the trained chemist used "fake expert reports dressed up to look like empirical science" to argue that the gas chambers used to kill hundreds of thousands at Nazi death camps never existed. A verdict is expected on 15 March. The notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel was recently sentenced to five years in prison by the same court.
