VANCOUVER — A former federal Green candidate disavowed by the party after she published a self-made video denying the Holocaust is on trial in Germany for incitement of hatred.
Monika Schaefer ran unsuccessfully for the Greens in Alberta's Yellowhead riding in 2006, 2008 and 2011, but the party rejected her as a candidate in 2015 and condemned her views the next year after the video emerged.
Andrea Mayer, a spokeswoman for Munich's public prosecutor's office, says Schaefer has been charged with six counts of "incitement of the people" for publishing such videos.
She says Schaefer's trial, which began July 2, is set to continue until August 17 and the maximum penalty for each count is three years in prison.
Mayer adds that Schaefer was visiting relatives in Germany and attended a court hearing in a different case when she was arrested on Jan. 3, and she's been in custody ever since.
In Schaefer's 2016 video, which is still up on YouTube, she calls the Holocaust the most "pernicious and persistent lie in all of history," and describes concentration camps as "work camps" that didn't have gas chambers.
