21 April, 2006
A German man extradited from the United States and a Belgian far-right extremist are to be tried in Germany on charges of denying the Holocaust and racial incitement, according to prosecutors in the city of Mannheim. Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke are accused of "systematically" denying or playing down the Holocaust in documents and on the Internet and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany which carries a maximum sentence of five years. Rudolf, a 41-year-old German who published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp, was deported to Germany from the USA in November to serve a 14-month sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges. Verbeke, a 64-year-old Belgian, was arrested in the Netherlands and also extradited to Germany last year. Prosecutors in Mannheim already are leading a similar but unrelated case against Ernst Zündel, a German deported from Canada last year.
