Race hate case appeal
Caitlin Fitzsimmons
29 October 2002

AN Adelaide man will return to court tomorrow to appeal against an order to remove material denying the Holocaust from the internet.

Dr Frederick Toben, who runs the Adelaide Institute, was prosecuted under Australia's Racial Hatred Act.

The Adelaide Institute website claims the Auschwitz concentration camp had no gas chambers and states that the number of Jews killed during World War II was exaggerated.

Judge Catherine Branson found Toben in breach of race hate laws because the material was reasonably likely "to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Jewish Australians".

The Act offers a number of exemptions protecting the right to free speech - including fair comment if it is "an expression of genuine belief".

Toben, who has spent seven months in a German jail for inciting racial hatred and defaming the memory of the dead, is expected to argue one of the exemptions in his appeal.

 

 

Adelaide Institute comments:  Tomorrow's appearance at 12 noon EST at the Federal Court will merely be a call-over!