Toben to test his boundaries
Keith Lockwood
Wimmera Mail-Times, 13 January 2010
Controversial Wimmera writer Fredrick Töben is planning a trip to America to launch his latest book, 50 Days in Gaol.
He aims to launch the book in Washington at the beginning of February, but he must first renew his American visa.
Because of his imprisonment in South Australia for three months last year on contempt of court charges, he has had to obtain a national police certificate for the visa application.
If he gains a visa and flies to America, he will risk arrest by German authorities again.
He is willing to run the risk.
“I am doing it on purpose,” he said. “I am not a criminal, but the world is my prison.”
Germany has an arrest warrant out for him under section 130 of its penal code – forbidding people from denying the Holocaust.
Headlines
Dr Töben captured world headlines in 2008 when he was pulled off a plane at Heathrow Airport, London, and held in jail while Germany tried to extradite him.
His new book, printed last week and yet to be launched, details his SWAT-style arrest on Flight AA98, his legal battle to avoid extradition, his 50 days in prison and the swirl of manoeuvring, polemics and drama surrounding the case.
Sub-titled Dr Fredrick Töben’s Global Battle for Free Speech, the book includes a lengthy foreword by Gerard Menuhin, son of famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin.
Dr Töben has now spent time in five prisons – all for his belief in free speech, particularly relating to his views on the Holocaust – Mannheim, Germany, in 1999, Wandsworth and Bedford prisons in England in 2008, and Yatala Labour Prison and Cadell Training Centre in South Australia last year.
During his time in Yatala and Cadell, the 65-year-old former Goroke teacher lost 13 kilograms. He spent a considerable part of his time cleaning and painting.
“I was ‘poster boy’ in the prison’s newsletter, the Cadell Courier, in November,” he said. “I almost single-handedly cleaned it up – like a good German. [At Yatala] My punishment was cleaning my cell. But it wasn’t punishment because cleanliness is a godly virtue.
“As a teacher I never gave yard duty [as a form of punishment] because it gave the wrong message that a cleaner was not worth much.”
He said [some] people in prison were forgotten by the system. Many were not well educated , without good social connections.
About 80 per cent were in for drug-related offences, and received ‘liquid handcuffs’ – methadone for their addiction.
He believed drugs should be legalised, under strict controls, to minimise their destructive repercussions.
Dr Töben is now working on his next book, provocatively titled Arbeit Macht Frei – ‘work makes you free’, the message over the entrance to Auschwitz.
Pictures
Fredrick Töben takes a break after painting a fence near the Cadell Prison Farm in South Australia’s Riverland.
Fredrick Töben peers out from a jail cell on the front cover of his new book 50 Days in Gaol.
Dr Töben meets the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during an international conference hosted by Iran in 2006 to review the Holocaust.
DO I TELL THE TRUTH OR DO I OBEY THE LAW




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