AUSTRIA: Austrian prosecutors in the trial of right-wing British historian David Irving filed an appeal yesterday to contest his three-year prison sentence, saying it was too lenient. "The public prosecutor believes the ruling was too lenient in light of a possible sentence of up to 10 years and Irving's special importance to right-wing radicals," said Walter Geyer, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Vienna.
Irving yesterday pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust, which is a crime in Austria.
During the one-day trial, he insisted that he had had a change of heart and that he now acknowledged the Nazis' second World War slaughter of six million Jews. Irving also acknowledged he had erred in contending there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp. "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he testified, at one point expressing sorrow "for all the innocent people who died during the second World War."
Irving's lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, said after the verdict was announced late on Monday that he would appeal the ruling. He has already done so, according to the Austria Press Agency. Mr Kresbach also told reporters that Irving would likely not serve the full three-year term because of various factors, including his age.
Irving is the author of nearly 30 books, including Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust, and has contended that most of those who died at concentration camps succumbed to diseases such as typhus.