Haaretz
Shavat 24, 5766
An Israeli lawyer said on Wednesday
that he has filed a criminal indictment with German federal prosecutors
charging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the crime of Holocaust
denial.
Ervin Eran Shahar filed the indictment on behalf of the
Civil Coalition, a civil rights non-governmental organization active in
Israel and elsewhere. He said the 56-page indictment was delivered to the
German Federal Prosecutors Office in Karlsruhe, Germany, on
Tuesday.
"I'm awaiting a response about whether they will file
charges but I don't know how long it will take," Shahar told Reuters. "It
doesn't take days but several months."
Ahmadinejad, previously the
mayor of Tehran and a former member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, has
called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and has repeatedly expressed
doubt that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War
Two.
Denial of the Holocaust is a crime in Germany punishable with
up to five years in prison.
"The Defendant should be investigated
for inciting racial hatred, defiling the dead and denying the Holocaust.
He should also be investigated according to international conventions and
international law for violating the rights of Jews to security, to life
and to freedom," the indictment says.
The prosecutors office in
Karlsruhe was not immediately available for comment. Prosecutors will have
to assess legal questions like jurisdiction, possible immunity from
prosecution and whether Ahmadinejad could be tried in
absentia.
Although Ahmadinejad has not publicly denied the
Holocaust on German soil, Shahar argues in his indictment that there are
firm legal grounds for bringing charges in Germany.
"In the case of
the actual criminal indictment - the crime as described is directly linked
to Germany, committed among others, against German nationals of Jewish
descent -- so it is expected that the Federal Prosecutor will decide to
prosecute."
German courts have previously tried persons for serious
crimes committed abroad with no direct link to Germany.
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly condemned Ahmadinejad for his
remarks.
British historian David Irving was sentenced to three
years in prison on Monday by an Austrian court, which found him guilty of
Holocaust denial. The trial of German Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel, who
was extradited to Germany from Canada, resumed earlier this month after it
was suspended late last year.