Justice official criticises Iran for Holocaust conference

The EU’s top justice official today condemned Iran for hosting a conference of Holocaust deniers, saying it constituted “an unacceptable affront” to victims of the Second World War genocide.

“I want to state my firm condemnation of any attempt to deny, trivialise or minimise the Shoah, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said in a statement.

He said the conference, initiated by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, showed an “utter disregard of historically established facts” and constituted “an unacceptable affront not only to the victims of that tragedy and their descendants, but also to the whole democratic world”.

The two-day conference, which ends today, drew sceptics from across the world to debate whether the genocide of Jews took place, a meeting which Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called a “sick phenomenon”.

Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as a “myth” and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Earlier this year, his government backed an exhibition of anti-Israel cartoons after Danish cartoons caricaturing Islam’s Prophet Mohammed were published in Europe, raising an outcry among Muslims.

Frattini said the conference in Tehran did nothing to fight anti-Semitism, racism or xenophobia.

“Anti-Semitism has no place in Europe; nor should it in any other part of the world,” he said.