From the AJN:

Toben’s London arrest could affect Australian lawsuit
Peter Kohn

AUSTRALIAN Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben, who was arrested in the United Kingdom last week and faces extradition to Germany, is in a London prison after being refused bail.

Toben was picked up on a European Union arrest warrant at Heathrow Airport on October 1, and may appear before a German court on charges of spreading false information about the Holocaust, which is a crime in Germany.

A bail hearing for Toben, 62, who spent seven months in a German prison in 1999 after a Holocaust denial conviction, was scheduled for October 10. A further hearing to decide his extradition to Germany will be held on October 17.

The City of Westminster Court in London set the dates at a session on October 3, at which Toben appeared with some of his supporters. British Holocaust denier David Irving was reportedly among those in court.

Irving, who lost a lawsuit against American Holocaust historian Professor Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier, told reporters the case against Toben “is about the right to say what you think and the right to be wrong.”

The arrest may have an impact on contempt proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against Toben by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

Jones launched the civil contempt action in 2006, when Toben returned after speaking at a Holocaust denial conference in Teheran. The civil action alleged repeated violations of a Federal Court order four years earlier that Toben remove Holocaust denial material from his Adelaide Institute website and not post new material.

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Dr Cohn Rubenstein said he “expects the Federal Court will consider the current contempt proceedings against Fredrick Toben on its own merit, which on the surface would appear to be persuasive”.

“There are grounds for conjecture that any imprisonment in Germany could have an impact if and when it comes to sentencing Toben in Australia, but we are not at that stage as yet. Right now, it is more pertinent to recognise that Fredrick Toben’s activities from his Adelaide base have brought him international attention and notoriety”