Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

trying to make up for their country’s Nazi past. Joe Gutnick inflicted
significant damage on free speech in Australia in 2002 when he
convinced the High Court that a comment in a Dow Jones online
publication published in the US could be the subject of libel
proceedings under Australia’s absurdly restrictive defamation laws,
rather than in the US.
If we accept this approach, then, depending on extradition treaties,
bloggers and online publishers could find themselves suffering the
same fate as Toben — hauled off to a country where expressing a
particular opinion constitutes an offence, regardless of whether it is an
offence in their own country — or one they happen to be in at the
time.
Sounds melodramatic, right?
Andrew Sinclair of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, while
not commenting specifically on the Toben case, raised a scenario.
What happens to an internet activist if a plane is forced to land, like
the Qantas flight last week, due to a mechanical emergency, and
touches down in a country with an extradition treaty with a jurisdiction
with harsh restrictions on free speech? Toben’s plane was on a
scheduled stopover at Heathrow when he was seized and taken from
it. To this extent, he is arguably responsible for his current
predicament, and should have avoided any EU country. But what if he
had been on a plane that was forced to land in an EU country due to
mechanical fault?
The combination of the UK’s willingness to extradite people when
they have committed no offence under UK law, and goverrnments’
willingness to claim jurisdiction over the internet, has trapped Fredrick
Toben. We should be speaking up for him now, rather than waiting
for a more appealing victim of this attack on free speech. And so
should our Government.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/10/15/on-freedom-of-speech-and-gerald-fredricktoben/
Seven months later, on 12 June 2009, ABC-TV came up with a world first
by labelling me a ‘Holocaust questioner’:
An Adelaide Holocaust questioner has won another reprieve from jail
after he was granted leave to appeal against a contempt ruling. Fredrick
Töben has been ordered to serve three months in jail for breaching
Federal Court Orders 24 times by publishing material vilifying Jewish
people on his website. Töben’s arrest was put off while the court decided
whether he would be allowed to appeal. It was put off again today when
the court ruled an appeal will be heard in August. Töben has promised
not to leave the state except to see his Melbourne-based lawyer.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FredrickToben#p/u/7/IqHJxm-_MfE
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