Controversial French author on trial for trivialising the holocaust

The controversial French author, Roger Garaudy, has gone on trial in Paris, charged with trivialising the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

Mr Garaudy, who denies any wrong-doing, published a book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics in which he disputed that six million Jews had been murdered during the second world war, saying the killings were massacres - not genocide.

Roger Garaudy is best known for the radical changes in his political philosophy.

He has successively been a devout Christian, a member of the French Communist Party and a recent convert to Islam.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service