Czech police charge Ku Klux Klan icon with hate crime (Roundup)

Apr 24, 2009, 21:48 GMT

Prague - Czech police Friday charged David Duke, former leader of US extremist group the Ku Klux Klan, with the hate crime of supporting and promoting movements suppressing human rights, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Police said they charged Duke for allegedly denying the Holocaust in a translated book he had come to promote.

'In his book he is promoting views that show signs of denying the Holocaust,' police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky told dpa.

He said that police questioned Duke and would take him to a police cell. A court would be requested to put him in custody.

Police can hold him for 48 hours without court's consent. The court then has an additional 24 hours to make a decision on custody.

Duke had planned to give talks this weekend in the capital as well as in the country's second largest city of Brno. He is visiting the Czech Republic at the invitation of local neo-Nazis to publicize the translation of his 1998 memoir, My Awakening.

Denying that the systematic mass murder of Jews and other minorities by Nazi Germany ever took place is a hate crime in the Czech Republic punishable by up to three years in prison.

Earlier this week, Prague's Charles University banned a lecture by Duke for a class on extremism. The university said it cancelled it out of a fear that it could have been attended by neo-Nazis.

Political activities of Czech far-right groups have been on a rise in recent months, including provocative marches through Roma ghettos.