Toben to be held until bail hearing

By · October 5, 2008

Fredrick Toben, wanted in Germany on charges of Holocaust denial, will be held in a London prison until his bail hearing.

Toben was picked up at Heathrow Airport on Oct. 1 on a stopover en route from the United States to Dubai. The bail hearing is scheduled for Oct. 10.

A hearing on whether to extradite Toben to Germany is scheduled for Oct. 17, according to news reports. The dates were announced Friday at the City of Westminster magistrates’ court. Toben and several of his supporters, among them David Irving, reportedly attended the hearing.

Irving several years ago lost a lawsuit against U.S. historian Deborah Lipstadt for having described him as a Holocaust denier. He told reporters that he might disagree with some of Toben’s views, but “he has the right to express them. This case is about the right to say what you think and the right to be wrong.”

Toben, 64, was born in Germany but lives in Australia, where he founded the radical anti-Jewish Adelaide Institute. He was jailed for nine months in 1999 in Mannheim Prison, convicted of “defaming the dead” by denying or questioning the Holocaust. A Federal Court of Australia ordered him in 2002 to remove anti-Jewish material from his Web site.