London, Dec 24 — David Irving‘s London office confirmed that a package arrived on Christmas Eve from Mishcon de Reya, the law firm acting for Deborah Lipstadt, containing an application in the High Court for the transfer to her of all Mr Irving’s lifetime research files and possessions, currently seized by the British government Trustee.They have asked for the case to be heard on January 23 [2004]. Mr Irving is currently writing in the United States.
The Trustee, Baker Tilly Ltd., confirmed this independently in a separate message to Mr Irving this morning.
Attached to the two-page application is a 150-page list of the items claimed, including books, microfilms, archives, and other possessions assembled by Mr Irving in a forty-year career of writing.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and their director Michael Whine (left) is secretly behind this latest attempt to crush the British historian, as Court documents reveal.
Mr Irving, who completed a 10,000 mile road tour of US cities on Dec 23, said:
“Nothing surprises people any more. The hate-filled traditional enemies of free speech are doing all they can to silence me and my writings, but they will not succeed. I have many friends too.”
Lipstadt prevailed in a widely reported three-month libel action brought against her by Mr Irving in the High Court in Jan 2000, after she smeared him as a “Holocaust denier.” Her US backers (including the American Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, and Steven Spielberg) and Penguin Books Ltd, poured $8 million into the courtroom to pay witnesses and hire a team of conformist historians.
Lipstadt is currently completing a book on the case entitled My Struggle.
As her backers were not party to the action, she made no application for her costs at the end of the trial and Mr Justice Gray, who heard the action and Mr Irving’s appeal against the costs awarded to Penguin Books Ltd, wisely made plain in his remarks that she would not have been granted them if she had.
AS PART OF THEIR PRE-TRIAL attempts to destabilise Mr Irving, a strategy of which Lipstadt boasted in talks in the Middle East, staff at the law firm Mishcon de Reya paid for an anonymous hate-wreath to be sent to the September 1999 funeral of his oldest daughter, a cripple, with a card gloating at her death (right).
Her counsel Richard Rampton, QC, justified this hatred cross-examining Mr Irving in the High Court libel action.
Photo: Hate wreath “This was indeed a merciful death.
Philip Bouhler and friends.” Bouhler, Hitler’s
euthanasia (mercy killing) chief, killed himself in 1945.
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