AFP British bishop Richard Williamson will not be present at his trial in Germany on Friday for questioning the Holocaust, his lawyer told AFP, saying he will represent the clergyman. "He will not be there," lawyer Matthias Lossman said on Wednesday. "I will explain to the trial why he is not coming." The bishop, a member of the breakaway Catholic ultra-conservative Saint Pius X Society, had said in a television interview recorded in Germany in 2009 that "200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers." "It was all lies, lies, lies," he said in the interview, aired later on Swedish television, and "not one Jew" was killed in the Nazi gas chambers. Williamson was fined 12,000 euros (16,900 dollars) in the southern city of Regensburg earlier this year where he made the comments. But a further trial was ordered after he refused to pay up, although the court does not require the bishop to be present. The outburst prompted a very rare comment on religious matters by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called on Pope Benedict XVI to "clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial" the Nazis killed six million Jews. The scandal carried particular resonance in Germany, where the Nazis masterminded and carried out the murders during World War II, and because the pope is German. The pope had also drawn strong criticism for cancelling the excommunication of Williamson and three other bishops in the Saint Pius X Society. Denying that the Holocaust took place, or questioning key elements, is illegal in Germany and Austria.
Holocaust-denying bishop ’to miss German trial’
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Click here to read the original article in AFP
Saturday, 17 April 2010
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