"He left court triumphant and, by coincidence, to a blast of
Mozart, which was being played in the courthouse to celebrate the
appointment of a local judge. "

David Irving, the historian jailed for three years in Austria for
denying the Holocaust, is free after a court reduced his prison
sentence on appeal.

Irving, who was sentenced in February, was released after Vienna's
highest court ruled today that he should serve one year in prison and
the remainder of his sentence on probation.

After already serving 13 months behind bars since his arrest in
November 2005, Irving had his handcuffs removed today in a small
courtroom crowded with his supporters and members of the local press.
"He is free, and he can leave, and he will leave," said Herbert
Schaller, his lawyer, adding that he would advise the historian to
leave Austrian soil as soon as possible.

Irving, under strict instructions not to talk to journalists, did not
confirm whether he would be flying to Britain but shook hands with his
supporters and returned to prison to pick up his belongings.

He left court triumphant and, by coincidence, to a blast of Mozart,
which was being played in the courthouse to celebrate the appointment
of a local judge.

Irving, 68, entered court this morning with the possibility that his
sentence could be increased rather than reduced. After his conviction
on February 20, lawyers for both sides had appealed, with the
prosecution arguing that the disgraced historian should serve closer
to the maximum 10-year sentence allowed under Austria's stringent
Holocaust denial laws. Irving's conviction was upheld by Austria's
highest court at an earlier appeal in September.

A warrant for Irving's arrest was first issued in Austria in 1989,
after the historian had questioned the extent and character of the
Nazi attempt to annihilate Europe's Jews. Irving, who was left
bankrupt and discredited by a high-profile libel trial in Britain in
2000 about his views on the Holocaust, was arrested by police after
arriving in the country to give a lecture late last year.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of breaking Austria's laws
forbidding the denial "of the genocide by the National Socialists or
other National Socialist crimes against humanity". Among the evidence
against him was Irving's belief that the attacks of Kristallnacht, a
pogrom against German Jews in 1938, was committed not by Nazi
officials but by "unknown" people dressing up in their uniforms. But
he expressed remorse for his views and acknowledged that gas chambers
did exist at Auschwitz, the main death camp of the Holocaust, a fact
he had questioned in the past.

The prospects for Irving's appeal appeared to have been damaged just a
week after his conviction, when in an interview with the BBC, he
continued to question the responsibility of Adolf Hitler in the
Holocaust and the estimate of 6 million dead that is commonly used to
describe the genocide. "Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans,
if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come
so many survived?" He asked, before repeating his belief that Hitler's
involvement in the Final Solution had "a big question mark behind it".

Local media reported today that prosecution lawyers could attempt to
file fresh charges within days based on interviews that Irving gave
from his prison cell but that once he left the country, it was
unlikely he would ever be charged.