Budapest - The first ever criminal conviction was
handed down for holocaust denial in Hungary. Yesterday, the court of
appeals affirmed the lower court decision and sentenced software
developer György Nagy one and a half years probation for denying the
holocaust.
In addition, the court ordered György Nagy to
visit either the Páva street Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest or
the Auschwitz Memorial Center in Poland or the Yad Vashem Memorial in
Jerusalem at least three times and describe his thoughts on the visits
in an essay.
The lower court sentenced György Nagy one
and a half years probation and ordered his supervision for denying the
holocaust on June 12, 2012.
Nagy was taken into custody
on October 23, 2011 during a demonstration as he held up a sign in
Hebrew that said "The Shoah did not happen".
During court
proceedings, Nagy signed court documents in the ancient Hungarian Rovas
script rather than using Latin letters claiming that he had the
constitutional right to use his mother tongue.
Nagy and
his lawyer have questioned the legal basis of the sentence claiming that
criminalizing the denial of the holocaust is contrary to the Basic Law.
The court however, stated that in certain cases to protect human
dignity the freedom of expression law can be overruled.
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