## Facts

- Roger Garaudy, a French author, published a book in 1995 and republished it in 1996 containing passages denying or radically minimizing the Holocaust, including the existence of gas chambers and the scale of Jewish extermination.
- Multiple organizations filed criminal complaints alleging denial of crimes against humanity, defamation of the Jewish community, and incitement to racial or religious hatred or violence.
- French courts convicted Garaudy of disputing crimes against humanity, defamation, and incitement to racial hatred and discrimination.
- Penalties included suspended imprisonment, fines, and compensation awards to civil parties.
- Garaudy applied to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing his conviction violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) and that the domestic legal framework functioned as censorship; he characterized his book as political criticism rather than denial of crimes against humanity.

## Issues

1. Whether Garaudy’s convictions for Holocaust denial, racial defamation, and incitement to racial hatred violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
2. Whether Article 17 (prohibition of abuse of rights) barred reliance on Article 10 because the expressions at issue aimed to undermine Convention rights and values.

## Decision

- The Court declared the application inadmissible as incompatible ratione materiae with the Convention.
- It held that the applicant could not rely on Article 10 because the impugned passages constituted Holocaust denial/revisionism and anti-Semitic hate speech.
- The Court applied Article 17 to exclude the expressions from Convention protection, treating reliance on Article 10 as an abuse of rights.
- The Court accepted that the domestic courts gave relevant and sufficient reasons for conviction and that the sanctions were justified in light of the nature and gravity of the statements.

## Legal Principles

- Denial or serious distortion of clearly established historical events such as the Holocaust may be treated as a severe form of racial defamation and incitement to hatred against Jews.
- Article 17 prevents the Convention from being used to protect expression directed at destroying or gravely undermining the rights and freedoms the Convention safeguards.
- Where Article 17 applies, the expression falls outside Article 10’s scope, and the complaint may be rejected at the admissibility stage without a full proportionality analysis under Article 10(2).
- Racist and anti-Semitic expression may be excluded from Convention protection where it attacks the Convention’s fundamental values and the dignity and security of targeted groups.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Holocaust denial and related anti-Semitic expression may be excluded from Article 10 protection through Article 17’s abuse-of-rights rule, rendering the Article 10 complaint inadmissible as outside the Convention’s scope.


Garaudy v. France, App. No. 65831/01 (Eur. Ct. H.R. June 24, 2003)