Sydney - An Australian previously jailed in Germany and Austria for expounding his view that there were no mass killings of Jews in World War II was convicted Thursday of contempt of court in Melbourne for continuing to publish anti-Semitic material on his website.

German-born former high school teacher Frederick Toben, 65, was the subject of a civil action by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, for defying a court order to stop publishing claims that the Holocaust never happened.

Toben, who said he would choose to go to jail rather than pay a fine when he is sentenced later this month, said he had no regrets.

"If you believe in something and you want to have that freedom to express your opinions, then you should be prepared for sacrifices," he said outside the court in Sydney.

Last year, Toben was held in London under a European Union arrest warrant because he is wanted by the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, on charges of publishing material on the internet of an anti-Semitic or revisionist nature.

Denying the Holocaust is an offence in Germany with a maximum jail term of five years.

In 1999, Toben spent seven months in jail in Germany and has served an 11-month sentence in Austria for Holocaust denial.

In 2006, Toben was a speaker at a controversial two-day conference in Tehran organized by the Iranian government and attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There, he described as "mere puffery" the assertion that mass killings of Jews were carried out by the Nazis. (dpa)