AUSTRIA: British historian David Irving has been charged with violating an Austrian law that makes Holocaust-denial a crime.
Mr Irving (67), a controversial Third Reich scholar who has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of six million Jews, was detained on November 11th in the southern province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989.
"A charge was filed in relation to two speeches in 1989 [ in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben] in which he denied the existence of gas chambers," prosecutor Otto Schneider said.
Mr Irving, who remains in custody in Vienna, has the right to appeal the charges. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
A detention hearing will be held on Friday to determine whether he should be held for up to four more weeks, Mr Schneider said. He added that a trial might not start before next year.
Irving supporters posted a statement on his website saying he was detained while on a one- day visit to Vienna, where they said he had been invited "by courageous students to address an ancient university association".
Mr Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
Besides his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust, he also has been quoted as saying there was "not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" on such a scale.
He has said he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of concentration camp deaths. He has questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers and has claimed that the numbers of those who perished are far lower than those generally accepted. He also contends that most Jews who died at Auschwitz did so from diseases such as typhus, not gas poisoning. - (AP)