The arch-conservative clergyman and Holocaust denier Richard Williamson has failed in the European Court of Human Rights. The Strasbourg judges dismissed the complaint of the British against being sentenced to a fine for sedition as inadmissible.
Williamson denied the existence of gas chambers for the extermination of Jews during the National Socialist era in a conversation with a Swedish television journalist recorded some ten years ago. Then he was finally sentenced in a protracted lawsuit in Germany to a fine of 1,800 euros.
The former member of the controversial Pius Brotherhood saw his sentence violated his right to freedom of expression. He argued in court that his statements were intended for the Swedish public, where Holocaust denial was not punishable. The judges held against it, that Williamson could very well expect that his statements would meet in Germany on interest - alone in view of the history of the country.
Williamson had also made no appointments with the television station to prevent a broadcast in Germany, it was said. The German courts had rightly decided that Williamson's statements were punishable in Germany - especially since the clergyman they met on German soil.