SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – An Australian revisionist historian won a legal battle to avoid extradition from Britain to Germany on charges of Holocaust denial.
Dr. Fredrick Toben, 64, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London on Oct. 1 while he was en route from the United States to Dubai. German prosecutors on Nov. 20 dropped their appeal of a British judge’s decision last month that the arrest warrant was invalid.
Westminster Magistrates Court District Judge Daphne Wickham had said in her ruling that the warrant contained only “vague and imprecise” details about Toben’s alleged offenses. German prosecutors wanted to charge Toben for publishing anti-Semitic material on his Adelaide Institute Web site between 2000 and 2004.
Holocaust denial in Germany is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.
Toben’s lawyers said he was released from custody Nov. 20 and is awaiting the return of his passport.
He is still, however, awaiting the verdict of a contempt-of-court hearing in Australia brought by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which has accused Toben of breaching a 2002 Federal Court ruling to remove all Holocaust-denial material from his Web site.
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