Strasbourg, 07/10/1998 (Agence Europe)

As indicated in yesterday's EUROPE, p.4, the European Parliament lifted (by 420 votes for, 20 against and 6 abstentions) Mr Le Pen's immunity, allowing action to be taken against him in German courts for the statement that gas chambers were just "a detail" of the Second World War. Those voting against lifting immunity were: MEPs of the French and Belgian extreme right, Italian MSI deputy Giuseppe Rauti, French I-EDN deputy Charles de Gaulle, Stefano De Luca (Forza Italia) as well as French Radicals Jean-François Hory, Gianfranco Dell'Alba and Olivier Dupuis. ... Presenting a minority opinion within his group, Italian Radical Gianfranco Dell'Alba took a stance against lifting immunity and explained one should not fall into the trap of responding to intolerance with intolerance, and thus give the extreme right food for thought.

... "There is no need for Mr Le Pen to use these lexical and semantic arguments as everyone knows full well that his real position is that of negationism", said French Radical Jean-François Hory, but he voted against lifting immunity as one must guarantee the freedom of expression for all. "Mr Le Pen and those like him deny the Holocaust. They take gas chambers to be a detail. Let them speak so that we can see they are the same, let their masks drop and reveal the poverty of their thoughts".