SA: Toben to serve 3-month term after losing appeal

AAP General News (Australia)
08-13-2009
SA: Toben to serve 3-month term after losing appeal

By Tim Dornin

ADELAIDE, Aug 13 AAP - Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben has been taken into custody
to serve a three-month jail term over publishing offensive material on the internet.

The 64-year-old was taken from the Federal Court in Adelaide by Australian Federal
Police on Thursday after losing his appeal against his conviction for contempt of court.

The Full Court of the Federal Court also ruled that his jail term, originally imposed
in May this year, was in no way excessive.

"In our opinion, the sentence of three months cannot, on any stretch of the imagination,
be considered excessive or unwarranted," the three-judge panel said.

The judges said Toben also had a disregard for the orders of the court and had acted
to undermine the authority of the court.

Earlier this year, Toben was found guilty on 24 counts of contempt for ignoring a previous
court order preventing him from publishing racist material on the Adelaide Institute website.

When he later imposed a three-month sentence, Justice Bruce Lander said Toben had continued
to breach those 2002 orders, which prevented him from publishing specific anti-Semitic
material.

The 2002 orders stemmed from a racial discrimination case brought against him by Jeremy
Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

In his final submissions on Thursday, counsel for Toben, David Perkins, suggested the
material published on the Adelaide Institute website, which questioned whether the holocaust
even occurred, was just a "drop in the bucket" compared to the amount of revisionist material
available on the internet.

But in their verdict, the judges said the case before them was not about the holocaust,
gas chambers or the execution of Jews during World War II.

They said it was about whether or not Toben had complied with orders of the court.

"Obedience to the court is not optional," they said.

As the court rose, Toben asked if he could say something to the judges, only to be
cut off by Justice Jeffrey Spender who simply said, "No".

AAP tjd/jl/cdh

KEYWORD: TOBEN WRAP

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