Men charged with denying Holocaust

BERLIN - A far-right activist extradited from the United Statesand a Belgian - both accused of denying the Holocaust - have beencharged with incitement, German prosecutors said.

Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke are accused of"systematically" denying or playing down the Nazi genocide ofEurope's Jews in documents and on the Internet and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred, prosecutors in Mannheim said.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany, where it carries amaximum sentence of five years.

Rudolf, a 41-year-old German who published a study claiming toprove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentrationcamp, was deported to Germany from the U.S. in November to serve a 14-month sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges.

Verbeke, a 64-year-old Belgian, was arrested in the Netherlandsand also was extradited to Germany in November.

Prosecutors in Mannheim already are leading a similar butunrelated case against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canadalast year.