Fugitive Holocaust Denier Ordered Extradited Back To Germany
Image by Getty Images
(JTA)– A Hungarian court has ordered the extradition of German right-wing extremist Horst Mahler who fled Germany to avoid serving out the rest of a sentence for Holocaust denial and incitement to anti-Semitism.
Mahler, 81, was arrested on May 15 in the Hungarian city of Sopron while trying to cross into Austria.
The Budapest city court on Tuesday said Mahler would be released if Germany did not take custody of him by June 16, the German Spiegel newspaper reported, citing Hungarian state news agency MTI.
Mahler had asked Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for political asylum in a letter he published May 12 on the internet. Referring to Orban as the “Fuehrer” of the Hungarian nation, Mahler said he “placed his fate in the hands of his government.”
In April, Mahler had been ordered to return to the Brandenburg/Havel correctional facility on May 19 to begin serving the final stretch of a 10-year sentence handed down in 2009. He had been released temporarily for health reasons, and reportedly had part of a leg amputated due to an infection.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
