VIENNA (AFP) - A Vienna court sentenced Monday a former extreme-right city councillor to four years in prison for Holocaust denial, adding another two-and-a-half years of a previous suspended sentence, a report said. It was the third time that Wolfgang Frohlich, 56, had been found guilty on similar charges, following letters to Austrian members of parliament and Pope Benedict XVI denouncing the Holocaust as a "Satanic lie," the APA news agency said.
Pleading "absolutely not guilty," according to APA, Frohlich had already served 23 months behind bars since 2003 - and gasped in court as the other 29 months were added. Frohlich - kicked out of the populist far-right FPOe party in 1994 - is to appeal, said his lawyer, Harald Schuster.
Austria has one of the strictest sets of laws surrounding Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi activity.
British revisionist historian David Irving spent 13 months in jail after his arrest in 2005 before being expelled to the UK.
EJP
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