German court issues five-year sentence

MANNHEIM, Feb. 15, 2007- A far-right activist was convicted of incitement and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison Thursday for anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial. 

The activist, Ernst Zundel, was deported to his native Germany from Canada in 2005. He has also lived in Tennessee. He and his supporters have argued that he is a peaceful campaigner who has been denied his right to free speech.

Zundel, 67, showed no emotion and only nodded occasionally when Judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen read the verdict.

His attorney, Ludwig Bock, said he would appeal.

"What is notable is the iron-hard refusal of the court to allow consideration of new scientific findings or expert opinions," Bock said.

Zundel faced 14 counts of incitement for disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda through a series of pamphlets and the Web site. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

His trial began in November in this southwestern city after an initial attempt to try him collapsed in March 2006 over a dispute with one of his attorneys, Sylvia Stolz.

At one stage, she was carried from the courtroom, screaming, "Resistance! The German people are rising up," after she defied an order banning her from the trial on grounds that she tried to sabotage the proceedings by denouncing the court as a "tool of foreign domination."

During the current trial, Bock quoted from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and from Nazi race laws in his closing statements last week as he argued for Zundel's acquittal.

Bock accused the Mannheim state court of not wanting to face a "scientific analysis" of the Holocaust and charged that prosecutors — one of whom has termed Zundel a "rat catcher" — had defamed his client.