Germar Rudolf - Legal Consequences: Escape, Deportation and Imprisonment

Legal Consequences: Escape, Deportation and Imprisonment

In 1995, Rudolf was sentenced to 14 months in prison by the district court of Stuttgart because of the "Rudolf Report", as Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany. Rudolf avoided prison by fleeing to Spain, England and finally to the United States. There, he applied for political asylum, but his request was denied in 2006.

Meanwhile, criminal investigations continued in Germany. In August 2004, the district court of Mannheim distrained a bank account in an attempt to confiscate 55% of Rudolf's business turnover from the years 2001-2004 (some €214,000; at that time the account contained only some €5,000, however). Rudolf and his associates had earned this money by selling publications which are banned in Germany, although Rudolf's business was located in the UK and the US, where this activity was and is legal.

On September 11, 2004, Rudolf married a US citizen and subsequently had a child. His first marriage was to a German national from which he had two children. Nevertheless, his requests for asylum or at least withholding from removal were turned down in November 2004 of that year on the basis that his application had no merits and was indeed "frivolous." Rudolf appealed against this ruling, and as a result of this the US Federal Court in Atlanta denied in early 2006 that his application was frivolous, yet it upheld that it had no merits. While Rudolf's asylum case was still pending, he was arrested on October 19, 2005, seconds after his marriage had been certified as genuine and valid. The Immigration Services stated that Rudolf does not have a right to file an application to remain with his family. On November 14, 2005, Rudolf was deported to Germany where he was wanted for inciting racial hatred. There on arrival, he was arrested by police authorities and transferred first to a prison in Rottenburg, then to one in Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg. On March 15, 2007, the Mannheim District Court sentenced Rudolf to two years and six months in prison for inciting hatred, disparaging the dead, and libel. Rudolf as well as the prosecution accepted the verdict. Rudolf's "Lectures on the Holocaust" were confiscated and ordered to be destroyed, that is to say: burned in waste incinerators under police supervision. The prosecution's initial request to confiscate €214,000 was reduced to €21,000, the total turnover from sales of the former book. He was released from German prison, July 5, 2009.