25 February 2005

BERLIN - Germany closed down on Friday a Turkish-language Islamist daily newspaper that has denied the Holocaust.

Interior Minister Otto Schily put a banning order on the Yeni Akit publishing house, which brings out the European edition of Anadoluda Vakit. The title means "the times in Anatolia". Prosecutors have been collecting evidence against the newspaper for months.

The Interior Ministry in Berlin said the closure was ordered because Vakit had incited to ethnic hate. The newspaper had attacked Israel, Jews in general and the fundamentals of western society.

Schily said Friday officials had impounded property as well as evidence at the company's offices in a southern Frankfurt suburb.

Despite warnings, the newspaper recently ran a letter headed "Hitler was right". In December last year, a member of parliament held up an issue that claimed "There Was No Holocaust" and appealed to the government to ban the paper.

Vakit's publishers have said in the past that the paper has a daily circulation of 10,000. Hesse state's office for the protection of the constitution says the paper appears to be associated with the Milli Gorus movement of Turkey and carries its advertisements.

Holocaust denial and incitement to racial hatred are both crimes under the German criminal code.

DPA

Subject: German news