In the appeal against the infamous Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck to the Berlin court, the 93-year-old was sentenced Friday to a year in prison. The accused denied and denied the Holocaust, the court justified its verdict. The trial was over Haverbeck’s appeal against two previous prison terms for hate speech from 2017 and 2020.
Both proceedings were merged into an appeals procedure at the regional court in the German capital. “You are not a Holocaust researcher, you are a Holocaust denier,” the presiding judge said in her verdict on Friday. Haverbeck said he was “miles from historical truth” and “damages the memories of millions of those who were murdered”.
Holocaust repeatedly denied
Haverbeck was sentenced to six months in prison by the Tiergarten court in 2017 for allegedly repeatedly denying the Holocaust during a public event at a Berlin restaurant the previous year. In 2020, the court sentenced Haverbeck to a year in prison for alleged Holocaust denial in an interview published on the internet in 2018.
Already two and a half years in prison
In the appeal that began in mid-March, several witnesses were heard and videos were played showing the two offenses for which Haverbeck was convicted. She was also convicted elsewhere in Germany and spent two and a half years in Bielefeld between 2018 and 2020. The Federal Constitutional Court had previously dismissed a constitutional complaint.
In the Berlin appeals procedure, the prosecutor’s office on Friday demanded a prison term of one year and four months, with four months of the total sentence deemed to have already been served for legal reasons. The defense argued for acquittal or, if convicted, a fine or suspended sentence.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
