The trial of British Bishop Richard Williamson over his denial of
the extent of the Holocaust, has been postponed - days before he was due
to appear in a German court.
The announcement followed media reports at the weekend that Williamson
had appointed a radical right-wing lawyer to represent him in court.
The trial scheduled for November 29 has been temporarily suspended, a court spokesman said.
This was because Williamson's new lawyer - whose name he did not confirm - had to familiarize himself with the case.
The trial was not expected to be rescheduled before the new year, the court spokesman added.
Williamson, of the ultra-orthodox Catholic Society of St Pius X (SSPX), denied in a television interview last year that the Nazis had systematically murdered millions of Jews.
The interview, for a Swedish television channel, took place in Germany, where Holocaust denial is a criminal offence.
Spiegel news magazine reported at the weekend that Williamson had appointed Wolfram Nahrath, a member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), to represent him in court.
Nahrath had led the Viking Youth, a neo-Nazi organization modelled on the Hitler Youth, until it was banned in 1994.
SSPX has distanced itself from Williamson's apparent choice of lawyer. In a statement on its website, the organization said it had ordered the bishop to reverse his decision, or face expulsion from the order.
Williamson's remarks shook the Catholic church last year, as Pope Benedict XVI had ended the excommunication of Williamson and three other SSPX leaders weeks earlier.
The pope has since said he would not have taken this step if he had known about Williamson's Holocaust denial, according to a book on the pope based on interviews by a German journalist, to be published in coming days.
In the TV interview, Williamson stated that no more than 300,000 people
had died in concentration camps, and that nobody was killed in gas
chambers.
SIC: TIME/INT'L