Feb. 27, 2009

Germany is considering issuing an arrest warrant on hate crime charges against a Holocaust-denying bishop, the country's justice minister said Friday.

It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Germany and in several other European Union countries.

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, speaking on the sidelines of EU justice ministers' talks in Brussels, said German officials were considering issuing an EU-wide warrant because the ultraconservative clergyman Richard Williamson denied the Holocaust in a Swedish television interview that was recorded in Germany. Williamson lives in Britain.

Zypries said that a German investigation into Williamson's remarks was already under way.

"Germany could issue a European arrest warrant," she said.

A new set of EU guidelines to toughen up national anti-racism and hate crime laws was passed in 2007.

Those new guidelines will commit all 27 EU countries to impose criminal sanctions against people or groups that publicly incite violence or hatred against other groups or persons based on race, color, religion, descent or ethnic origin.

The guidelines also recommend EU nations impose prison sentences of up to three years for those convicted of denying genocide, such as the mass killing of Jews during World War II and the 1990s massacre in Rwanda. That rule would apply only to genocides that have officially been recognized under statutes of the International Criminal Court.

Not all EU countries have implemented the new guidelines yet, EU officials said.

During the interview broadcast last month, Williamson denied that 6 million Jews had been killed during the Holocaust, saying no more than 300,000 were murdered. He also denied that gas chambers had been used for the extermination of Jews.

The Vatican said on Friday that Williamson's apology, issued on Thursday, fell short of meeting the Holy See's demand for a full and public recanting of his position.

Williamson on Thursday issued a statement in which he said: "To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologize."

But chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Williamson's statement "does not seem to respect the conditions" set forth by the Vatican on Feb. 4, when it ordered Williamson to "in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions" regarding the Holocaust.

On Jan. 24, Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of Williamson and three other bishops to try to heal a 20-year-old schism that began when they were thrown out of the Church for being ordained without the permission of Pope John Paul II.

Among those who condemned Williamson and the pope's decision were Holocaust survivors, progressive Catholics, members of the U.S. Congress, Israel's Chief Rabbinate, German Jewish leaders and Jewish writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.

In his statement issued on Thursday, Williamson said: "I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them."

Williamson arrived in Britain earlier this week after he was ordered to leave Argentina, where he was the director of a seminary of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067496.html