21 December 2006
The revisionist British historian David Irving has welcomed his release from an Austrian prison after serving more than a year for denying the Holocaust. Irving said he was "fit and well" and would be calling for an academic boycott of German and Austrian historians until their governments stopped putting historians in prison. He was released after Vienna's highest court granted his appeal and ruled to convert two-thirds of his three-year sentence into probation. Since he had already spent more than 13 months behind bars, the ruling meant he would be released. He said later: "I'm returning to England. I'm fit and well but feeling sorry for my family. I was put in prison for three years for expressing an opinion 17 years ago.''
Irving, 68, was sentenced in February under a 1992 law which applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media". These offenses are punsihable by prison terms of up to 10 years. During his trial, Irving pleaded guilty to the charge of denying the Holocaust but maintained he never questioned it in the first place. Both the defense and the prosecution appealed against the sentence. In September, Austria's highest court upheld his conviction. Irving has been in jail since his November 2005 arrest on charges arising from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 for which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews. He has argued that most of those who died at concentration camps including Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than execution.
Lord Janner, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, commented on Irving's release: "I am sorry that he did not serve out his full term, and I hope he will remain in Austria and not return to the United Kingdom, where he will not be welcome.'' Asked about Irving's comments about historians being put in prison, Lord Janner said: "I do not believe that he was put in prison because he was a historian. And historians should be treated in the same way as anyone else.''
