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HIS CRIME WAS QUESTIONING THE HOLOCAUST®

Spanish bookseller sentenced to prison

NSNS & News Agencies Wednesday, 10 March 2010

MADRID — A Spanish bookshop owner was sentenced to prison by a Barcelona court Monday for “honoring and justifying genocide” by selling books questioning The Holocaust® and defending Adolf Hitler.

NEW SPANISH INQUISITION? — Dissident Pedro Varela is seen here during a 2007
arrest for thought crimes. Spanish democracy has now ordered his books to be burnt.

Pedro Valera, owner of the Librería Europa bookshop, was given a term of two years, nine months. Fifteen months were for "propagating genocidal ideas," and another 18 months were for "working to overthrow fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Spanish Constitution" [!] by organizing "neo-Nazi" conferences.

The dissident activist was also fined $4,000 and his stock of books was ordered confiscated and destroyed, along with historical posters, an iron Swastika and a bust of Hitler.

Varela's defense attorneys had argued that Varela belonged to no political party and that there were no banned books in Spain. But the court held that by offering 16 specific titles for sale, Varela had committed a criminal offense. These include Spanish-language editions of:

Foundations of Biopolitics by Jacques de Mahieu;
Race,Intelligence and Education by H.J. Eysenck;
Self-Portrayal of a Fascist: Léon Degrelle by Michel Charlier;
Hitler and His Philosophers by J. Bochaca;
The New Man by Ion Moţa;
The Iron Guard by Corneliu Codreanu;
Ecumenism Among Three Parties: Jews, Christians and Muslims by Father Angel Garcia de la Ojeda;
The Green Rain of Yasuf by Israel Shamir;
Wagnerian Thoughts by Houston Stewart Chamberlain;
The History of the Conquered, Vol. II, by Joaquim Bochaca;
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion;
Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Hitler's Conversations, Vol. I (1933-1935);
Crimes of the Good by J. Bochaca;
Nobility by Dr. Alexander Jacob;
Revolutionary Ethics, ed. by Pedro Varela

Facing further imprisonment

Commenting on the iconic Holocaust® during his trial, Varela said simply: "So far nobody has found these famous bars of soap into which they were supposedly transformed. And I doubt the numbers of the dead would reach the mythical 6 million.”

Varela was sentenced earlier to a prison term on similar charges, but avoided going to jail because he had no criminal record. Varela was the first person to be punished under a 1996 law that makes "propagating genocide" a crime in Spain.

While Holocaust® denial is not punishable by imprisonment in Spain, under its doublespeak laws, justifying it is. The Constitutional Court ruling was implemented in 2007 following the suspension of a five-year prison sentence against Varela on the grounds that imprisonment for Holocaust® denial is “unconstitutional.”