Deckert Arrested for Suspicion of Book Authorship

Günter Deckert who has recently been convicted for racism was placed under arrest on Thursday on fresh allegations of inciting racial hatred and denying the orthodox Holocaust story.

Deckert, the former leader of the right-wing National Democratic Party, was detained as he arrived at Frankfurt airport from the Spanish island of Tenerife on Wednesday night.

Prosecutors said that Deckert was apprehended in connection with the publication of a book entitled The Guenter Deckert Case. Police searched Deckert's home in August and confiscated documents and advertising material related to the book, parts of which they believe Deckert penned himself. Police also believe that Deckert was responsible for the distribution of his book.

Deckert's original conviction was the result of a lecture he organized in 1991 in which he and Fred Leuchter, an American expert on the design and fabrication of homicidal gas chambers, denied that the Nazis had killed millions of Jews in concentration camps in World War Two.

The judge sentencing Deckert said he had shown no regrets after his conviction and had made it clear that he would not be silenced. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in April 1995, after the Federal Court of Justice overturned a more lenient sentence and ordered a new one.

Deckert's conviction was enforced in law only on October 27, 1995 when the court rejected an appeal, and he was to start his sentence within a month.