David Irving: Jailed Historian Defiant
Disgraced historian David Irving today claimed he was jailed because authorities are scared of what he has to say.
Speaking from the Austrian prison where he has started a three-year term for denying the Holocaust, the 67-year-old said he had simply been exercising freedom of speech.
He also confirmed he would appeal against the sentence, and called prosecutors "crazy" for mounting a bid to lengthen it.
“I think they are trying to silence me and by increasing the sentence they are trying to silence me for even longer," he told Sky News.
Irving was jailed in on Monday connection with two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989, in which it was alleged he denied the existence of the gas chambers.
He pleaded guilty this week to denying the Holocaust, a crime in Austria punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
During the trial he insisted he had a change of heart and that he now acknowledged the Nazis’ Second World War slaughter of six million
Jews.
Irving also acknowledged he had been wrong to say there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
His sceptical stance towards the Holocaust has outraged Jewish refugees from the Second World War, who accuse him of making up his sources.
However, Irving today said he still did not believe much of what was routinely held to be true about the concentration camps.
"I'm saying 'Listen, I'm not a mug, I want to be told the truth and nothing but the truth'," he said.
"Freedom of speech means the right to be wrong, and sometimes I'm wrong."
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Speaking from the Austrian prison where he has started a three-year term for denying the Holocaust, the 67-year-old said he had simply been exercising freedom of speech.
He also confirmed he would appeal against the sentence, and called prosecutors "crazy" for mounting a bid to lengthen it.
“I think they are trying to silence me and by increasing the sentence they are trying to silence me for even longer," he told Sky News.
Irving was jailed in on Monday connection with two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989, in which it was alleged he denied the existence of the gas chambers.
He pleaded guilty this week to denying the Holocaust, a crime in Austria punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
During the trial he insisted he had a change of heart and that he now acknowledged the Nazis’ Second World War slaughter of six million
Jews.
Irving also acknowledged he had been wrong to say there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
His sceptical stance towards the Holocaust has outraged Jewish refugees from the Second World War, who accuse him of making up his sources.
However, Irving today said he still did not believe much of what was routinely held to be true about the concentration camps.
"I'm saying 'Listen, I'm not a mug, I want to be told the truth and nothing but the truth'," he said.
"Freedom of speech means the right to be wrong, and sometimes I'm wrong."