From the Financial Times (what what!):

Irving branded Holocaust denier
By Eric Frey in Vienna
Published: February 20 2006 19:56

An Austrian court on Monday sentenced British historian David Irving to three years in jail for denying the occurrence of the Holocaust.

The verdict by a jury of eight lay jurors and three judges was harsher than some legal experts had expected. It came after a one-day trial in which Mr Irving pleaded guilty to denying the second world war genocide of Jews during visit he made to Austria in 1989. Austria has one of the toughest Holocaust-denial laws in Europe.

Mr Irving told the Vienna court he had subsequently changed his views after studying the personal papers of Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann. “The Nazis did murder millions of Jews”, he said in court. The prosecutor, however, accused the defendant of faking his remorse in hope of a mild verdict. “I am shocked”, said Mr Irving after hearing the judgment. His lawyer said he would appeal.

The 68-year-old historian, who first came to Germany as a young steel worker, published numerous books on Nazi Germany and the second world war and became an icon in European far-right and Neo-Nazi circles for his revisionist views.

Six years ago, a British High Court rejected a libel suit Mr Irving brought against Deborah Lipstadt, whose book on Nazi apologists singled out Mr Irving as a persistent offender in Holocaust denial. The case bankrupted him but boosted his to his prominence. The judge in that case called him “an active Holocaust denier” and accused him of anti-Semitism. Mr Irving returned to Austria last November even though he was aware there was an the arrest warrant issued against him. He was detained on a motorway near Graz as he was travelling to address a rightwing student group.

The Irving trial, in a heavily guarded Vienna court, came amid a Europewide debate over whether Holocaust denial should be a crime.