German Court Targets Online Denier of Holocaust
Source: Reuters News Service, 12 December 2000
German Court Targets Online Denier of Holocaust
KARLSRUHE, Germany, Dec 12 (Reuters) – A German court on Tuesday ordered the retrial of an Australian for denying on the Internet that the Holocaust happened.
The man, Frederick Toeben, had previously been acquitted in Germany on a charge of spreading the so-called “Auschwitz lie” over the Internet.
In a judgment with possible implications for regulation of the global computer network, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that former schoolteacherToeben could be charged with inciting racial hatred under German law because the offending material, denying the deaths of millions of Jews during the Nazi era, could be accessed by German Internet users.
However the court acknowledged bringing to justice those responsible for such material was another matter.
“The question is now what is the possibility of an extradition,” said a court spokesman. The German-born Toeben was not in court.
Toeben was sentenced by a regional court to 10 months in jail last November for distributing leaflets in Germany alleging that the Holocaust did not happen, a crime under German law.
But he was acquitted on charges of doing the same over the Internet after the court said the fact the website was run on computers installed outside Germany meant it was outside its jurisdiction.
Toeben served only part of his sentence on the other charges. The court spokesman said his present whereabouts were not clear, but he has recently been quoted in media interviews in Australia, where he also faces legal action for his website.
The ruling is likely to be welcomed by the German federal government, anxious to stop neo-Nazi material being distributed within Germany over the Internet from countries with more liberal freedom of expression laws.
Officials acknowledge, however, that whether offenders can be prosecuted under German law depends on the willingness of other countries to extradite suspects for trial here.
Source: The Associated Press, December 13, 2000
Holocaust Revisionist Rejects German Court’s
Internet Finding
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) – An Australian Holocaust revisionist said Wednesday he would not remove material from his Internet site despite a German court’s finding that it is illegal under German law.
“Germany is trying to rule the world again by saying that the people who access the Internet have no choice,” said Frederick Toben, who heads the Adelaide Institute, an Australian organization devoted to questioning the Holocaust. Of his site, he said: “If someone is offended by the material, they can switch off.”
In a case involving Toben, the German Federal Court of Justice found that German laws against denying the Holocaust apply to the Internet even if the content originates in another country and is placed there by a non-German. The ruling in effect gave German prosecutors the power to seek the arrest of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers wherever they are as long as their Internet sites are accessible in Germany.
Toben is unlikely to be prosecuted as a result of the ruling: A trial would require his extradition from Australia, which does not have anti-revisionist laws.
Toben, a German-born Australian citizen, was arrested in April 1999 after trying to discuss his ideas with a state prosecutor in the German city of Mannheim. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison after a German court found him guilty of denying the killing of millions of Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
He returned to Australia after serving part of the sentence.
