Toben jailed for Holocaust denial
HOLOCAUST denier Fredrick Toben was taken into custody today (Thursday) and will serve three months in jail for flagrantly denying there was a Holocaust.
PETER KOHN
HOLOCAUST denier Fredrick Toben was taken into custody today (Thursday) and will serve three months in jail for flagrantly denying there was a Holocaust.
After the hearing, three Federal Police officers handcuffed Toben outside the court and took him to a waiting car.
At the end of the almost eight-hour proceeding, much of it taken up by Toben’s rhetoric, a full bench of the Federal Court of Australia dismissed his appeal against a contempt finding over offensive material on his Adelaide Institute website.Toben, of Adelaide, has spent time in jail for Holocaust denial in the UK, Germany and Austria, but has not been jailed in Australia before.
He is likely to serve his sentence at Adelaide’s Yatala high-to-medium security prison.
At the end of yesterday’s Federal Court appeal hearing in Adelaide, the full court, Justices Jeffrey Spender, Peter Graham and John Gilmour, found there had been no error in Justice Bruce Lander’s April 16 ruling that Toben was guilty of 24 charges of contempt, nor that his three-month jail sentence was excessive.
Plaintiff Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, launched the contempt action in 2006 after Toben persisted with Holocaust denial articles on his website, in violation of a landmark 2002 Federal Court ruling that they be removed and not replaced.
After yesterday’s judgement, Toben asked to speak, but was told by judges he would not be permitted. He made an exclamation about “blind obedience”, as he was led away.
Losing his appeal means Toben has likely reached the end of a 13-year campaign of defiantly publishing false and insulting claims about the Holocaust.
He has asserted, among other points, that it was unlikely there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, some Jews “exaggerated” the Holocaust “for improper motives”, and Jews offended by his claims possessed “limited intelligence”.
“It’s the end of a 13-year saga,” Jones’ senior counsel Robin Margo told The AJN. Jones’ solicitor Steven Lewis of Slater & Gordon, and junior counsels Reg Graycar and Shane Prince were also in court for the ruling.
In 1996, Toben took out a newspaper advertisement promoting his Adelaide Institute website, which triggered a complaint by Jones to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). The HREOC ruled in favour of Jones, but could not enforce its finding, which led to the court action.
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