Austria will expel British Holocaust denier David Irving and ban him from ever returning to the country, now that his prison term there has been reduced.
An Vienna appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Irving should be released from jail and serve the remainder of his three-year sentence on probation, setting the stage for him to be freed.
Irving says he will be flying out of Vienna for London today.
"Austria is a piss-poor little country," he said.
"They say that they want to prevent me from coming back; I have no interest in coming back.
"If you go to Saudi Arabia and you drink beer, you get arrested. This is the same kind of thing.
"It tells a little bit about the quality of the country."
He says it was "a great shock to find myself arrested or kidnapped for what I said" 17 years ago.
Irving, 68, has already served 13 months in prison following his arrest in November 2005.
He was sentenced to three years' jail after being found guilty on three counts of denying the Holocaust in remarks he made in Austria in 1989.
He said it was dangerous for him to discuss his views in Austria but that he would say: "I think Mel Gibson was right".
Irving was referring to comments by Gibson in July that Jews were responsible for causing all the world's wars.
- AFP