An Austrian court has sentenced Wolfgang Fröhlich, a former city
councilor to four years in prison for Holocaust
denial, adding another two-and-a-half years of a previous suspended
sentence.
Fröhlich pleaded "absolutely not guilty."
He had already
served 23 months behind bars since 2003 and was quite
shocked when the court
added an additional 29 months. The Austrian government
clearly fears free speech with regard to this one historical
event.
Fröhlich has been found guility of similar charges three
times. Fröhlich was sentenced in
1996 for operating his World War Two Revisionist
Website. He also ran afoul of the court after sending letters to Austrian members of
parliament
and Pope Benedict XVI denouncing the Holocaust as a "Satanic
lie."
At Jürgen Graf's 1998 trial, Fröhlich testified
that, for technical reasons, mass gassings with Zyklon B could
not have been carried out in the German concentration camps as
alleged. Fröhlich suffered no legal repercussions for his
testimony.
Austria is one of the worst human rights offenders with regard to
limiting freedom of speech and the press. Their laws
regarding Holocaust
revisionism and or denial are the most severe in Europe.