Toben's home and on offensive
Pia Akerman | December 08, 2008
The Australian
BACK home in Adelaide's leafy eastern suburbs, serial Holocaust revisionist Fredrick Toben is unrepentant.
The grim cells of London's Wandsworth prison are a long way away, and the Holocaust denier is free once more to loudly declare the views that others find so offensive.
"The Germans never systematically exterminated anyone - it's a lie," he says, sipping coffee in a Norwood cafe.
"I refuse to recant."
Dr Toben, 64, returned to Adelaide last week after his 50-day stay in London's Wandsworth Prison and wasted no time in resuming his Adelaide Institute newsletter, telling his supporters of his experience.
The former schoolteacher was arrested aboard a plane at Heathrow airport on October 1 en route to Dubai.
British police were acting on a European Union arrest warrant, issued in Germany, which accused him of publishing internet material "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature".
"It was a legal ambush," Dr Toben told The Australian.
"I was the test case for the European arrest warrant.
"I mentally prepared myself for seven or eight months at Wandsworth ... we were going to go right through to the House of Lords if we failed at the lower levels."
But Dr Toben's legal team - recruited by former Newcastle beauty queen and outspoken revisionist supporter Michele Renouf - emerged victorious after a British judge ruled the arrest warrant invalid.
Dr Toben maintains there are people out to get him.
"I know they are out to get me because I refuse to believe in their nonsense," he said. "Their aim is to criminalise thought."
His case sparked debate in the British press, with civil libertarians, MPs and editorials loudly voicing opposition to the German extradition attempt.
"His opinions are wrong and offensive - but error and offensiveness are not grounds for banning an opinion, still less for imprisoning the individual who expresses it," wrote London's The Daily Telegraph.
"The British legal system should have no part in this process. It is a blatant attack on free speech."
Holocaust denial is not a crime in Britain or Australia.
It was not the first time Germany - his homeland - had pursued Dr Toben. He spent seven months in a Mannheim prison in 1999 for inciting racism.
With international travel off the cards in the near future in case of further arrest, Dr Toben remains in Adelaide awaiting a Federal Court judgment in a civil case against him.
He has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges alleging he breached orders by the Federal Court in 2002 not to publish offensive material on his website. He faces a finding of criminal contempt if found guilty.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...013404,00.html
[Great credit goes to Toben for standing up to tyrants, and to La Renouf too.]