Holocaust conference in Tehran: Faurisson tried for “racial defamation”
By I24news – AFP
Published: 06/21/2016 – 9:40 p.m.
One month’s prison sentence and a 3,000 euro fine was requested Tuesday against the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson at a hearing held in Paris for “racial defamation” for remarks denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers made at a conference in Tehran in 2006. The court’s ruling will be delivered September 27.
December 11-12, 2006, the former professor was a participant at the Tehran conference questioning the reality of the Holocaust, provoking almost unanimous condemnation worldwide.
Among the comments under scrutiny, Robert Faurisson said: “President Ahmadinejad (then head of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ed.) had the right word, the alleged Holocaust of the Jews is a myth: that is to say, a belief maintained by credulity or ignorance.
“The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Jews form one and the same historical lie, which allowed a gigantic political and financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism and whose main victims are the German people (…) and the Palestinian people in their entirety,” he added.
Even though statements made abroad cannot be prosecuted in France, this is no longer the case if these statements are then distributed online as in this instance, prosecutors said.
Three complaints were filed against Faurisson; two by the then Justice Minister, Pascal Clement, for “disputing a crime against humanity.” The third was filed by LICRA [League Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitism] for “Racial defamation”.
A motion to nullify the first two complaints for reasons of legal non-conformity was brought at the beginning of the hearing. After deliberation, the court postponed its ruling regards this issue also until September 27.
For several hours of the hearing and using the court as a platform, Robert Faurisson, 87, again exposed his revisionist theories that have already earned him several convictions.
For the state prosecutor as well as for Christian Charrière-Bournazel representing LICRA, there is no doubt that Faurisson’s words constitute defamation of the Jewish community. By invoking the state of Israel and international Zionism, “We are facing slander which is the result of hatred against Jews,” declared Charrière-Bournazel.
But for Faurisson’s lawyer, Daniel Viguier, it is wrong to reach this conclusion:
“The citizens of Israel are not all Jewish and there are Zionists amongst Christians,” he argued.
The lawyer also denied that the text of his client released on Internet is the transcript of the speech given in Tehran which, he said, lasted 10 minutes and was delivered in English.
