The prosecutors of Budapest’s 5th and 13th districts brought charges against the publisher of a book denying the Holocaust, the Budapest chief prosecutor Tibor Ibolya told MTI on Thursday.
Ibolya added that the book, written by a Swedish author, was published in 2012 and allegedly distributed by the publisher.
The prosecutor’s office requests the court to impose a fine on the publisher, who has admitted to the crime, it said.
The charges come after last year’s decision on the part of a Budapest court to block around 20 websites that carry content denying the Holocaust took place.
These websites sold the Hungarian edition of the same Swedish author’s book that has now led to criminal charges.
A Budapest district court had ordered the internet content concerned to be made temporarily unavailable in 2016. The indictment now requests the ban to be made permanent.
Under a 2010 Hungarian law, Holocaust denial in public is a crime punishable by up to three years imprisonment.
About 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
The Budapest prosecutor’s announcement comes on the heels of Hungary’s refusal of asylum for infamous German Holocaust-denier Horst Mahler earlier this year. Mahler, age 81, illegally left Germany and fled to Hungary, where he hoped to gain asylum. The far-right firebrand received a 10-year prison sentence in 2009 for “inciting hate and for denial of the Holocaust,” both of which are crimes in Germany.
Via MTI