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your Fred Toben index Melbourne Push to Free Jailed Holocaust Revisionist By PENELOPE DEBELLE ADELAIDE AND GEOFF KITNEY Holocaust revisionists in Australia are organising an international appeal to raise 00 bail to secure the early release of Dr Fredrick Toben from a German jail.
The acting head of the ultra-right Adelaide Institute, Mr Geoffrey Muirden , said thousands of dollars had already been raised to pay Dr Toben’s lawyer, Mr Ludwig Bock , for his defence of the German-born Holocaust revisionist on hate speech charges in Mannheim. Dr Toben, 55, was sentenced to 10 months’ jail on Wednesday after a three-day trial in Mannheim in which he was found guilty of charges of incitement, disparagement and insulting the memory of the dead.
Dr Toben, a former Victorian teacher who lives in Adelaide, was arrested in April under German laws designed to prevent Holocaust denial. Australian Jewish groups said yesterday the conviction was encouraging to all people who support democracy and tolerance. The national vice-president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mr Jeremy Jones , said Dr Toben was lucky to escape lightly as the offence carried a maximum penalty of five years’ prison.
Mr Jones said Dr Toben must have been trying to call German authorities’ bluff or trying to make himself into a martyr by visiting Germany. “It’s encouraging not just to Holocaust survivors but to all people who encourage democracy and tolerance that Germany has in place a criminal offence and they are willing to use the criminal law to punish people who continue the propaganda handiwork of Nazis.”
Dr Toben was arrested for challenging the severity of the Holocaust through newsletters and material he posted on the Adelaide Institute’s website. The charges were not sustained in relation to the website material, a decision the German hate crimes prosecutor, Mr Hans Klein , said he would challenge. Mr Klein said the case set a dangerous precedent.
The court’s decision that it had no power to prosecute over material published in Germany on an Internet site created in Australia was a bad decision that opened up dangerous possibilities, he said.
It would allow the far right in Germany to use its connections with sympathisers in countries such as Australia to pursue its goals of undermining laws in Germany aimed at containing anti-Semitism and preserving the memory of the Holocaust to ensure that such a thing could never again happen. “It is important to appeal against this court decision,” he said. Because Dr Toben has been in custody since April, the court ruled that he could be released on the payment of a $5000 fine.
Trial sparks Internet racism fears By GEOFF KITNEY , Herald Correspondent in Berlin German authorities fear the trial of an Australian Holocaust revisionist has given the green light for far Right groups to use the Internet to spread their race hate messages. Former schoolteacher Frederick Toben was charged with illegally distributing anti-Semitic and race hate material in Germany by mail and via the Web site of the Adelaide Institute, of which he is the director.
But the local court in the southern city of Mannheim declined to punish Toben for the information on the Web site, which challenges the historic truth of the Holocaust. It said it only had to deal with written material distributed in Germany in hard form. The court convicted Toben on charges of inciting racial hatred, of defaming the memory of the dead and of public denial of the Holocaust for material contained in an open letter he sent to political leaders and others in Germany.
As a result, he received a prison sentence of only 10 months, compared with the two years and four months asked for by prosecutor Mr Hans Klein .
Mr Klein said the decision would allow the far Right in Germany to use its connections with sympathisers in countries such as Australia to pursue their goals of undermining laws in Germany aimed at containing anti-Semitism and preserving the memory of the Holocaust to ensure that such a thing could never again happen. “It is important to appeal against this court decision,” he said. Judge Klaus Kern said there was no doubt that Toben was guilty of denying the Holocaust.
There was also no sign that Toben would relent from this behaviour and a jail sentence was required. But he said the court could only take into account the material which he had physically distributed in Germany. Material published on the Internet was not physically distributed in Germany by Toben. Its distribution depended on an Internet user connecting to Toben’s Adelaide site and pulling material from it.
Because Toben has been in custody since April, the court ruled that he could be released on the payment of a $5,000 fine. Supporters of Toben in the court, including prominent figures of the German far Right, said they would try to raise the funds to secure his release within days. Court sources said Toben planned to