Irving trial

The speeches included a call for an end to the "gas chambers fairy tale" and claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had helped Europe's Jews and that the Holocaust was a "myth".

On 20 February 2006 Irving pleaded guilty to the charge of "trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust".

At the trial, Judge Liebtreu quoted numerous statements of Irving's, including "there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz" and "it makes no sense to transport people from Amsterdam, Vienna and Brussels 500 kilometres to Auschwitz simply to liquidate them when it can be more easily done 8 km from the city where they live".

However, Irving continued to insist that Hitler knew nothing of the death camps, and that "The figure of six million killed Jews is just a symbolic number".

[8] The judge, Peter Liebtreu, summarised: He showed no signs that he attempted to change his views after the arrest warrant was issued 16 years ago in Austria....

[9]At the end of the one-day hearing, Irving was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in accordance with the Austrian Federal Law on the prohibition of National Socialist activities (officially Verbotsgesetz, "Prohibition Statute") for having denied the existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps in several lectures held in Austria in 1989.

[10] On 28 February, Irving once again questioned the Holocaust, asking "Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?"

Both Irving, hoping to have the verdict overturned, and the Austrian prosecutor, calling for a longer sentence, served appeals on 22 April 2006.

[18] Upon Irving's arrival in the UK he reaffirmed his position, stating that he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.

The German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler supported Irving's imprisonment under the grounds that "the denial of such an unimaginable murder of millions, one third of whom were children under the age of 14, cannot simply be accepted as something protected by the freedom of speech".

[20] By contrast Deborah Lipstadt argued that Irving should not be imprisoned for expressing views that she finds odious and wrong.