but a prosecutor said he would seek a longer jail term.
Austria’s state prosecutor’s office announced it had lodged an appeal to have the sentenced increased as Irving had allegedly "only pretended to moderate his views" to try to escape a jail term.
Denying the Holocaust, in which about six million Jews died, is a crime punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment in Austria, the birthplace of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and a former part of the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945.
Such a law does not exist in neighboring Hungary, which was a close ally of Nazi Germany during most of World War Two, when about 600,000 Hungarian Jews were massacred.
Denying the Holocaust is however not allowed in several other Eastern European countries, including Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, as well as the former Soviet republic Lithuania. Belgium, France, Germany, Israel and Switzerland also prohibit the public questioning of the Holocaust.
IRVING APPEALS
Irving, 67, already filed an appeal against the three-year jail term, saying it was "ridiculous" that he was being tried for expressing an opinion.
"Of course it’s a question of freedom of speech… I think within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian statute book," he claimed. His lawyer, Elmach Kresbach, described Monday’s ruling as "a little too stringent" and suggested that it showed the court cased was "a bit of a message trial."
Iran, which wants to hold a controversial conference on the "extend of the Holocaust" also condemned the sentence in comments Tuesday, February 21. After talks with European Union officials, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters in Brussels that "West on the one hand claims freedom of expression but on the other, implements the opposite in practice."
Irving, 67, was arrested on a 16-year-old warrant during a return visit to Austria by police on a motorway in southern Austria, where he was to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity. He has been held in custody since then.
AUSCHWITZ COMMENTS
Irving was wanted for comments he made in 1989, when he gave a speech and an interview denying the existence of gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
During the one-day court hearing he told the judge he had made "a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz."
But he also told reporters he did not want to label the events as a Holocaust. "I don’t like trade marks, I would call it the Jewish tragedy in World War Two. Millions died, millions of Jews died there is no question…I don’t know the figures, I am not an expert on the Holocaust."
A few kilometers from the court, Leon Zelman told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) he was welcoming the sentence. Zelman survived Auschwitz, the rest of his family did not. "The children must understand that the Holocaust was something that should never happen again. And the young people for the future should never allow it to happen again," he said.
IRVING CRITICS
However some of Irving’s fiercest critics disagreed with the sentence saying it could make him a martyrs of Nazi and other far right groups. The author and academic Deborah Lipstadt, who Irving unsuccessfully sued for libel in the United Kingdon in 2000 over claims that he was a Holocaust denier, said she was dismayed.
"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don’t believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth," she told the BBC News website. Some politicians also criticized the move. "Sending British writer David Irving to jail for denying the Holocaust was probably going too far," New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark told reporters on Tuesday, February 21.
"But it showed how seriously Austria regarded its Nazi past," she German News Agency DPA wuoted her as saying. Clark banned Irving from visiting New Zealand in October 2004, dubbing him "someone whose views are damaging good relationships in the community."
She refused to intervene when New Zealand immigration laws denied him the six-month visa automatically granted to most British people because he had been deported from Canada in November 1992,
ANTI SEMITISM
The case in Austria has however underscored mounting concern over what rights groups see as rampant anti-Semitism across Europe, including in France. French police on Tuesday, February 21, continued an investigation into the killing of a young Jewish man who died after being kidnapped and tortured for three weeks.
The murder of Ilan Halimi, 23, a mobile telephone salesman, shocked Jewish community leader Roger Cukierman, who reportedly urged the government to "provide the whole truth" about the case.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin already suggested that the judge handling the case was investigating leads pointing to an anti-Semitic attack, and said he had ordered his interior and justice ministers to shed all possible light on the affair. Police said a gang led by a man calling himself "brain of the barbarians" used a young woman to lure Halimi into a trap and then detained and tortured him while demanding a ransom.
The gang, whose members are thought to be aged between 17 and 32, are suspected of involvement in six other kidnappings since the end of last year. They allegedly contacted Halimi’s family via the Internet, text messages and by telephone, demanding a ransom of 450,000 Euros ($536,000) “because Jews are rich." The family was unable to raise the funds. (With reports from Austria, France and BosNewsLife Research).
