German court sentences Ernst Zundel to 5 years in prison for Holocaust denial

PanARMENIAN.Net - Far-right activist Ernst Zundel was convicted of 14 counts of incitement Thursday for Holocaust denial and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison. Zundel, 67, who was deported from Canada in 2005, was accused of years of anti-Semitic activities, including denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany - in documents and on the Internet.



Zundel and his supporters have argued that he is a peaceful campaigner who has been denied his right to free speech. Zundel has been a prominent white supremacist and Holocaust denier since the 1970s. Among other ventures, he ran Samisdat Publishers, a leading distributor of Nazi propaganda based in Canada. He also provided content to The Zundelsite website, which has followers around the world, hundreds of whom have protested his detention.



Zundel was born in Germany in 1939. He immigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials rejected his attempts to obtain citizenship in 1966 and 1994. Upon arrival in Toronto, Zundel was arrested and held in detention until a judge ruled in March 2005 that his activities posed a threat to national and international security, and he was deported to Germany.



Zundel has been standing trial in Germany since November of last year in what were, at times, raucous proceedings. In the current trial, defence lawyer Ludwig Bock quoted from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and from Nazi race laws in his closing statements last week as argued for Zundel's acquittal, reports canada.com.