Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") and Holocaust denial, and he served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.
In April 2017, Mahler was ordered back to prison for a further three and a half years. On 18 April 2017, he fled the Federal Republic of Germany, hoping to avoid execution of the sentence. His attempt to receive political asylum in Hungary was rejected, and he was deported back to Germany, where he was arrested and put back in jail to finish serving his sentence.
Mahler was born at Haynau[note 1] in Silesia on 23 January 1936, the son of a dentist.[citation needed] In February 1945, as the end of World War II in Europe began, the family fled from the approaching Red Army to Naumburg an der Saale. Less than a year later they moved first to Dessau, and then in 1949 to West Berlin after Mahler's father – a fanatical Nazi and antisemite – had committed suicide.

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