David Irving, the historian who once claimed that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of six million Jews, has been arrested by police in Austria after his car was stopped for a roadside check.

Authorities in Vienna said that the 67-year-old author was being held under a warrant issued in November 1989 for speeches which were considered to break domestic laws preventing active denial of the Holocaust.

The offence carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Major Rudolf Gollia, the interior ministry spokesman, said Mr Irving had been en route to a students' meeting in Vienna when he was stopped on a motorway in the southern province of Styria on November 11. He was transferred to a prison in Graz.

The charges stemmed from speeches Mr Irving delivered in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben in 1989.

Christoph Poechinger, a spokesman for the Austrian Justice Ministry, said it was likely that charges would be pressed against Irving and that he would be kept in custody until the case came to court.

"There is a grave danger that he will repeat the offence, therefore it is likely he will be kept in custody until it comes to court. A warrant has been outstanding since 1989 and the case will probably be made a priority, but I doubt it will come to court before Christmas," Herr Poechinger told the Austrian newspaper Der Standard.

In a statement posted on his website, Irving supporters said that he was arrested while on a one-day visit to Vienna, where they said he had been invited "by courageous students to address an ancient university association".

The statement alleged that he had been arrested by police who learned of his visit "by wiretaps or intercepting e-mails". Austrian authorities had no immediate comment on the suggestion.

Mr Irving wrote some 30 books before becoming notorious worldwide in 2002 after launching a libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, the American academic who described him as a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book Denying the Holocaust.

He lost the case and was forced into bankruptcy. The judge ruled that he was "an active Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic and racist".

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