Irving trial
criminal case in Austria for Holocaust denial

In 2005, the British author and Holocaust denier David Irving was arrested for Holocaust denial in Austria. In early 2006, he was convicted and given a sentence of three years, of which he served 13 months after a reduction of his prison sentence.
Actions
In 1989, David Irving made two speeches in Austria, one in Vienna and the other in Leoben denying the Holocaust. 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".
Irving was arrested driving in Southern Austria, contravening a ban on entering the country. Irving had previously been fined in Germany, for denying the existence of Auschwitz gas chambers.
Arrest
On 11 November 2005, the Austrian police in the southern state of Styria, acting under a 1989 warrant, arrested Irving. Four days later, he was charged by state prosecutors with the speech crime of "trivialising the Holocaust". His application for bail was denied on the grounds that he would flee or repeat the offence. He remained in jail awaiting trial.
The public source identifies “Irving trial” as criminal case in Austria for Holocaust denial. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Irving, trial and criminal.
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This entry incorporates text from “Irving trial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.