A convicted Holocaust denier has won a fight to avoid extradition to Germany where he would have faced more allegations of denial.

German-born Frederick Toben, 64, was arrested at Heathrow airport at the beginning of October after arriving from America en route to Dubai. He was held under a European Union warrant issued by German authorities.

But his arrest, and the attempt to extradite him, brought widespread criticism from human-rights supporters, led by Liberal Democrat home-affairs spokesman Chris Huhne, who pointed to the fact that while Toben's views were unpalatable, he was not a criminal in Britain. Moreover, the offences of which he was accused in Germany, where Holocaust denial is an offence, related to Toben's Australian website.

Toben, now an Australian citizen, had been accused of posting information online between 2000 and 2004 that denied, approved of or played down the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

The ex-teacher set up the Adelaide Institute, which questioned the central facts concerning the Holocaust.
In 1999, he was given a 10-month jail sentence by a court in Mannheim, Germany, after publishing pamphlets which denied the mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz. He served seven months of the sentence before he was granted bail.