Haaretz
Kislev 30, 5767
The Austrian judge who ruled in favor of the early
release of British Holocaust denier David Irving from jail is considered
to be a supporter of Jorg Heider's rightist Austrian Freedom Party, the
Austrian news agency APA reported on Wednesday.
When Haider's party
was a coalition member, judge Ernest Mauer was appointed as member of the
Austrian Broadcasting authority Osterriechischer Rudfunk.
The
controversial historian was set to leave Austria after winning an appeal
on Wednesday against a three-year prison sentence for denying the
Holocaust, his lawyer said.
Following his conviction in February
for denying the Nazis' organized the mass murder of 6 million Jews, Irving
had appealed for a reduced sentence while the prosecutor wanted a longer
one.
Irving has been in jail since his arrest in November 2005 on a
visit to Austria, which was part of Germany's Third Reich from 1938 to
1945.
The Vienna court ruled his sentence should be changed from a
jail term to probation and that Irving was free to leave.
"He is
free, and he can leave, and he will leave," said his lawyer Herbert
Schaller.
Austria had issued an arrest warrant for Irving in 1989
for denying the Holocaust in lectures and in a press interview he gave the
same year.
Denying the Holocaust in Austria, which provided a
significant number of top Nazi leaders including Adolf Hitler, is a crime
punishable by up to 10years in prison.