Convicted Holocaust denier Gerd Honsik reiterated his claim in an Austrian court overnight that there were no gas chambers in Germany during World War II.

“There was not a single gas chamber anywhere in the area of Greater Germany, I stand by that,” Honsik told a court in Vienna.

“Here ends the 65-year-old lie about gas chambers in Mauthausen and Dachau,” he said, referring to two concentration camps in Upper Austria and in southern Germany.

“I have been persecuted – like Nelson Mandela – for 25 years,” he said.

Honsik, 68, was in court because prosecutors have appealed a ruling earlier this year that his jail sentence be cut from five to four years.

After the hearing overnight deteriorated into a shouting match between prosecutors, the judge and the defence, the appeal was adjourned until September 9.

Honsik was found guilty in April 2009 of denying the Holocaust and the existence of gas chambers in a number of publications between 1987 and 2003.

He served four years in prison in the 1960s on the same charge and was sentenced again to one and a half years in 1992 following the publication of his book Freispruch fuer Hitler? (Acquittal for Hitler?).

But he fled to Spain, where he stayed for 15 years – and continued to publish – before he was extradited back to Austria in 2007.

The most recent charges against him related to his magazine Halt (Stop) and two books Schelm und Scheusal (Rogue and Monster) and Der Juden Drittes Reich (The Jews’ Third Reich) published between 1987 and 2003.

In March this year, an Austrian appeals court ruled that the latest five-year sentence was “too much” and cut it to four years.

(Source: Telegraph UK)