A COUNCILLOR who admitted questioning the scale of the Holocaust still holds a senior position on Aberdeen’s ruling Tory-Labour administration.

Last November we unearthed a series of old posts from Ryan Houghton where he suggested some events around the Nazi regime’s state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews had been “fabricated”.

The Tory, who stood for the party in Aberdeen North at the General Election, even suggested fellow users on a martial arts forum have a debate on how the holocaust had been “exaggerated by the victors".

At the time Houghton refuted any suggestion he held antisemitic, racist or homophobic views, but did not deny making the comments. He vowed to clear his name and accused The National of taking them out of context and missing the nuance.

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However, the Scottish council of Jewish Communities said the comments were “unacceptable and rooted in antisemitism".

Despite the Tories suspending the councillor and removing support for him in the run up to the December 12 election, he remains Aberdeen City Council’s business manager and vice-convener of the staff governance committee.

That job comes with a £30k salary, an extra £13k on top of the basic councillor’s salary.

An attempt to oust him from the job was defeated when councillors on the Tory and Aberdeen Labour administration voted it down.

At the time, the Tory group leader and co-leader of the council, Douglas Lumsden said Houghton was “innocent until proven guilty”.

He added: “I think it would be wrong for us to remove someone from their role when these are just accusations at present and they’re being investigated by the party.

“The Conservative party takes things very seriously and there is a full investigation taking place.”

Lumsden said the Tories “look at these matters very seriously and we will look to what the outcome of the investigation is".

Yesterday, the Tories told us that the investigation was still taking place.

An SNP source told The National: “Ryan Houghton should have been suspended from the Tory council group the moment he admitted making these bigoted remarks.

“If Jackson Carlaw or Michelle Ballantyne want to be seen as anything like credible candidates for Tory leader then it’s time they faced up to this issue and explained what overdue action they will take to remove Ryan Houghton from the Tory group on Aberdeen City Council for good.”

Neither the Tories or Houghton responded to The National’s request for a comment.

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The row came as people across the world marked Holocaust Memorial Day to remember the millions of people murdered by the Nazis. Writing on the forum in 2013 under the username Razgriz, Houghton said there is “no credible evidence to suggest the Holocaust did not happen” but that “I do find some of the events fabricated, and exegarated [sic] in some cases".

He added: “As history is written by the victors there is always going to be a bit of re-writing.”

When another forum user called David Irving is a charlatan, Houghton leapt to the defence of notorious Holocaust denier.

Irving, who has written more than 20 books, has been widely condemned for his sympathetic view of Hitler and for disputing the official account of the Holocaust.

Irving sued author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher for libel after she wrote that he was a Holocaust denier, he famously lost the case in 2000.

In 2006, Irving was jailed in Austria – where Holocaust denial is a criminal offence – after describing the gas chambers as a “fairytale”.

Houghton said: “A charleton [sic] seems a bit heavy, even his opponent’s recongnised [sic] his skill as a historian.”

He added: “His arguments - in terms of the Holocaust- have been that Hitler was not in the know about Aushwitz, rather as he challenged Deborah Lippstrad to do, show a genuine document linking Adolf Hitler to Auschwitz-Birkenau... No one has yet taken his challenge.”

In another post he suggests forum discuss whether “the events of WW2 mainly the Holocaust have been exaggerated by the victors".