[Marcus Marulus]

German rightist jailed for Hitler salute

23 November 2007

Berlin - A prominent right-wing extremist received a six- month jail sentence on Friday for giving a Hitler salute - a punishable offence in Germany.

Horst Mahler, 71, was convicted of making the outlawed gesture when he entered prison in November last year to serve a sentence for another crime.

Mahler was not present when the verdict was handed down at the regional court in Cottbus, 150 kilometres south-east of Berlin.
A lawyer who defends neo-Nazis and has convictions for sedition and glorifying crime, Mahler had his passport invalidated for six months last year so he could not attend a Holocaust denial conference in Iran.

On a previous occasion, Mahler's passport was withdrawn to prevent him travelling to Auschwitz in Poland and denying there the genocide of the Jews.

Since 1945, the Nazis' murder of an estimated 6 million Jews has been exhaustively documented by prosecutors and historians from Germany and many other nations using eyewitness testimony, archival records and recovery of human remains.

A handful of pro-Nazi historians described as revisionists claim the Holocaust did not happen.

Mahler, who in the 1970s supported far-left terrorism in Germany and was a founder of the Red Army Faction, has also been fined by German courts for praising the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

DPA

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