David Irving Arrested Under a Law that Actually should be Repealed

VIENNA, Austria - British historian David Irving was arrested last week in southern Austria on a warrant accusing him of denying the Holocaust, the Interior Ministry said Thursday. Irving was arrested Nov. 11 in Styria province, said police Maj. Rudolf Golia, an Interior Ministry spokesman. He was transferred to a prison in Graz.

Irving was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime, Golia said. The accusation stemmed from speeches Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

Irving is certainly guilty of denying the Holocaust, but it is not a good idea at all to turn him into a free speech martyr. It is better to fight denier sewage with the truth than with police and prison sentences.