German Court Annuls British Bishop's Holocaust Conviction 22/02/2012

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German court quashes British bishop's Holocaust conviction
22/02/2012

A German court on Wednesday quashed a British bishop's high-profile conviction for Holocaust denial for procedural reasons but said he may face a new trial on the same allegations.

A court in Nuremberg ruled there were "irremediable procedural problems" in the case against Richard Williamson, who was fined 6,500 euros ($8,600) in July for denying key facts about the Nazi genocide.

"The prosecutor now has the possibility of pressing charges on the basis of the same facts of the case," the court said in a statement.

A spokesman for prosecutors told AFP that they indeed intended to file new charges "as quickly as possible," adding this could happen in around five weeks.

The renegade bishop, 71, told Swedish television in 2008 that "200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps" and disputed the existence of the gas chambers.

The interview was given in a city in Germany, where it is illegal to deny that the Nazis murdered six million Jews during World War II.

The court on Wednesday emphasised that its decision did not mean Williamson's actions were not illegal, but that procedural flaws had compelled it to annul the case.

Williamson, a member of the breakaway ultra-conservative Catholic fraternity, the Saint Pius X Society, also hit the headlines in 2009 when Pope Benedict XVI reversed his excommunication in a bid to bridge a rift with the organisation.

Benedict later said he would not have made such a move if he had known about Williamson's views on the Holocaust.

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Permalink Reply by Dawn Marie on February 23, 2012 at 6:38am

QUOTE

A criminal investigation of Bishop Williamson was launched by the German authorities within weeks of the broadcast, and in October 2009 he was fined €12,000 under the German system of “order of punishment”, which initially involves no trial but is sometimes accepted by defendants in straightforward cases, such as traffic offences and the like.

The Bishop’s initial lawyer Matthias Lossmann had been appointed via the SSPX, and pursued a defeatist strategy which led to his client being convicted following a trial in Regensburg in April 2010, though the fine was reduced to €10,000.

A first appeal was heard in July 2011, again in Regensburg, by which time Bishop Williamson had taken on new lawyers – first Wolfram Nahrath, and later Prof. Edgar Weiler, who represented him at the appeal hearing which I attended.

The outcome of this appeal was to reduce the fine again to €6,500, but the legal arguments introduced by Prof. Weiler have now resulted in the complete throwing out of the charges.

A reading of the documents suggests that Prof. Weiler was successful in challenging the very basis of the charges – namely the essential question of at what point Bishop Williamson had committed an offence. Was it illegal simply to make these statements in Germany, even behind closed doors, to the Swedish journalist? Surely this was not a “publication”.

Were the prosecutors arguing that Bishop Williamson had intended the comments to be broadcast in Germany, bearing in mind that he was speaking to a Swedish journalist for a Swedish programme? Or that he had not done enough to prevent that publication? If so, in what sense? The broadcast clearly shows Bishop Williamson warning the journalist that such comments are illegal in Germany and that they should not be published there.

The higher court has now agreed that the prosecutors’ charges against Bishop Williamson failed to make these matters clear, and that his conviction should therefore be thrown out.

For the time being, the prosecutors are putting a brave face on their defeat, insisting that they intend to bring new, more precisely stated charges. But by doing so they risk drawing further attention to the dangerous ambiguity of a German legal system which operates by very different standards of free expression from many of its European partners.

Such contradictions led of course to the historic victory in the London courts in 2008, when a European Arrest Warrant against the Australian academic Dr Fredrick Toben, drawn up by German prosecutors was similarly thrown out for reflecting the very vagueness of the law it is based upon, which fails to define terms such as “holocaust” or its unique alleged mass murder weapon. On that occasion too, the German authorities and their partners in the Crown Prosecution Service insisted that they would appeal and continue to seek Dr Toben’s extradition, but they quickly abandoned their flimsy case.

The interests of truth and justice – not to mention the interests of the hard-pressed German taxpayer – would be well served if the prosecutors again accepted defeat in Bishop Williamson’s case.

source

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Permalink Reply by Dawn Marie on February 23, 2012 at 6:40am

"The Higher Regional Court of Nuremburg has called off the criminal proceedings for incitement against Bishop Williamson. The Court's press office made the announcement on Wednesday. Mgr. Williamson's trial was said - apparently - to be only a preparatory one and did not (yet) involve a criminal offence. To be guilty of incitement, Mgr. Williamson would have had to have spoken in public or at a public meeting. The Criminal Division emphasized that this judgement did not mean that such historical enquiry was legal in Germany.

"The District Court in Regensburg had not explained when handing down judgement how or where exactly in Germany the Bishop's interview had been published. The indictment issue, i.e. the subject of the proceedings, had not been adequately described. It had only been said that Mgr. Williamson could have known that the interview could also cause trouble in Germany. But it had not been explained how and where the interview, which had excluded the public, had been published in Germany.

The Prosecutor could prefer the same charges again. Then the whole trial would have to be reopened. The media have interpreted the acquital as a "procedural error"."

Source: krueznet

(translation by Gabriel IA)

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Permalink Reply by Alan on February 23, 2012 at 6:29pm

They won't pursue charges again. They already look like a bunch of dimwits as it stands. If they have any sense in them at all they will walk away and leave the good bishop alone.