Tight Security As Trial of Holocaust Denier Begins

The British Nazi apologist and revisionist historian David Irving goes before three Austrian magistrates and a jury of eight in Vienna this morning to plead guilty to charges of denying the Holocaust.

Irving, who called for an end to the "gas chambers fairy-tale" in 1989, faces a jail term of up to 10 years under Austria’s laws banning Nazi revivalism.

The trial has been transferred to Vienna’s biggest courtroom to accommodate the international interest in the case, which has triggered a debate about historical truth and free speech - a debate made all the more pertinent by the row over the cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad.

Anti-terrorist police are to be stationed around the court and the gallery is being sealed off to protect the judges.

Neo-Nazi activists are expected to be out in force to deliver "Hitler salutes", for which they could be arrested, to one of their favorite historians. Leftwing radicals may also converge to counter the neo-fascists.

Irving, 68, is being tried on charges dating from 1989 when he made two speeches in Austria declaring that Hitler had helped Europe’s Jews and that the Holocaust was a myth. He was arrested in November while driving in southern Austria despite being barred from the country, on his way to address an extreme-right student fraternity in Vienna.

Bankrupted by a celebrated libel case he brought and lost at the high court in London in 2000, Irving has been in custody in Vienna since November, allegedly writing his memoirs and being deluged by fan mail. The Vienna trial marks a return to the limelight he has forfeited since being branded a Nazi apologist and distorter of historical truth in the 2000 case.

Last week Irving said he would plead guilty as there was no alternative under Austrian law, the stiffest Holocaust denial legislation in the world that dates from the late 1940s. His lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, said Irving had clearly violated article three of the law. The mitigating argument is that Irving apparently no longer believes the things he said in the incriminating speeches in 1989, and that during the 1990s he revised his views as a result of further research into the Nazi era.

Critics point out that no such revision was apparent during his pursuit of the libel case in 2000.