BERLIN (AP) — A German court convicted ultraconservative British Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday of denying the Holocaust in a television interview.

British Bishop Richard Williamson, an Ultra-conservative Catholic, will boycott his trial in Germany for Holocaust denial in an interview where he said “It was all lies, lies, lies,” and “not one Jew” was killed in the Nazi gas chambers.

Holocaust-denyer, Catholic Bishop Williamson

MANNHEIM, Germany – Far-right German activist Ernst Zundel was freed after serving five years in prison for denying the Holocaust ever happened — something he wouldn’t speak about Monday.

The 70-year-old had been extradited in 2005 from Canada, where he spent some additional time behind bars on the German warrant after having been deported from the United States for alleged immigration violations.

A crowd of 20 supporters on Monday morning clapped and shouted “bravo” as Zundel emerged from the prison in Mannheim. Some handed him flowers as he passed through the prison’s steel gates.

“I’m back out after seven years, three weeks, three prisons and three countries,” Zundel said, declining to comment when asked whether the Holocaust happened. He also served some time in prison in North America.

“It’s kind of a sad situation; there’s a lot to say. I’ll certainly be careful not to offend anyone and their draconian laws.”

Zundel was convicted on 14 counts of inciting hatred for years of anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a Web site devoted to denying the Holocaust — a crime in Germany. The Web site’s accessibility made it possible for German prosecutors to charge him.

Zundel and his supporters had argued he was exercising his right to free speech.

On Monday he gave no details about his future plans, saying only that he wanted to improve his health and would return to his home region in the Black Forest.

“Having spent the last seven years in a ‘chicken coop,’ I’ve gained a lot of weight. I have to lose that. I have to get checked out in a hospital,” Zundel told reporters outside the Mannheim prison, though did not indicate that he was ill.

He said he was unsure if he would return to Canada, where he had lived in both Toronto and Montreal for years after emigrating in 1958. He was rejected twice for Canadian citizenship and moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but was sent back to Canada in 2003.

In February 2005, a Canadian judge ruled that Zundel’s activities were a threat to national security as well as “the international community of nations,” clearing the way for his deportation to Germany later that year.

One of his lawyers on Monday criticized the five-year sentence in Germany as having been too severe, saying there had been a lack of justice due to the fact that the Holocaust is a sensitive subject in Germany.

“I’m happy that he made it,” attorney Alexandra Rittershaus said. “It was a hard and frustrating time” during which she said he was initially not allowed to receive all of some 1,700 letters because officials feared it would “threaten his resocialization.”

Supporters outside the prison called Zundel “a brave man” and “a victim of justice,” while some maintained there still was no evidence that anyone was gassed to death at Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Meanwhile, another Holocaust denier had his Austrian prison sentence reduced Monday from five years to four. Austrian author Gerd Honsik — who wrote “Hitler Innocent?” — was sentenced in April after being arrested in Spain, to where he had fled following his original 1992 conviction for writings that defended Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

A Vienna court ruled Monday that Honsik’s five-year sentence was too hefty.

MADISON – The online ad, a small text link, is easy to miss. It reads, “The Holocaust Question: The Power of Taboo.”

The advertisement on the Badger Herald Web site leads to a site denying the Holocaust and the University of Wisconsin-Madison student newspaper is now taking heat for running it.

Badger Herald Editor Jason Smathers on Thursday defended the decision to accept the $75 ad, while members of the campus Jewish community and a First Amendment expert repudiated the choice.

The issue raises questions of the delicate balance between the value of freedom of speech and the potential harm of certain messages.

The controversy started with a spate of anti-Semitic comments posted to a Badger Herald article earlier this month. That caught the attention of Mexico-based Holocaust denier Bradley Smith. Wanting to capitalize on the debate, he sought to place the ad.

Smathers rejects Smith’s message, calling it a “troth of lies” in an opinion piece, but said he allowed it to run because “no opinions or assertions can be so offensive that we cannot bring ourselves to hear them.”

“This newspaper has made a principle of accepting any individual or group advertisement submitted,” Smathers wrote in Thursday’s Badger Herald. “The only cases in which we would reject an advertisement are if it exhibits threats toward any person or group or is of a libelous nature. This advertisement, while certainly fueled by veiled anti-Semitism, does not rise to the level of threats and therefore does not merit rejection.”

But Howard Schweber, a UW-Madison political science professor specializing in the First Amendment, said the Badger Herald “got it wrong.”

He said that in this case, since the ad doesn’t present an argument but is just a link, it could serve as a recruiting tool for like-minded individuals.

“This looks much less like an ad trying to spark a debate than an ad that is using the Badger Herald as a platform for recruitment,” he said.

UW-Madison Hillel Director Greg Steinberger said he asked Smathers to pull the ad, which is scheduled to run for 30 days.

“They are an enabler for this Holocaust denial,” Steinberger said. “I asked for a public apology and I don’t think they’ve done that.”

But Smathers said he trusts that most in the campus community will see Smith’s message and turn against it. He said the money paid for the ad will go toward efforts to counter Smith’s movement.

MOSCOW, January 28 (Itar-Tass) – A legal action demanding the recognition of Stepan Bandera as a Nazi criminal, guilty of the genocide of Poles, is being prepared in Poland, a representative of the Russian Union of Former Minor Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps told Itar-Tass.

“On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory over Nazism, for the first time in world practice, the title of a national hero was conferred on Stepan Bandera — a zealous accomplice of Hitler. Bandera, the leader of the ‘organisation of Ukrainian nationalists,’ closely cooperated with Nazis during World War II and took part in the creation of SS units, which fulfilled punitive tasks. They brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians. They burned alive peaceful civilians in the villages of Belarus, which was invaded by Nazis, specifically in the village of Khatyn,” he said.

Former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps reminded that “Roman Shukhevich, an SS hangman who took part in punitive expeditions, was also conferred the title of the hero of Ukraine. “The minor prisoners of Nazi camps, integrated in the Russian Union of Former Minor Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps, insist on the cancellation of those shameful decrees,” said the representative of the Union. “A legal action demanding the recognition of Bandera as a Nazi criminal, guilty of genocide of Poles, is being prepared in Poland.”