SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco Superior Court jury will begin deliberating Friday on the fate of an alleged Holocaust denier accused of attempting a forced interview from Nazi death camp survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel inside a San Francisco hotel in 2007.

Attorneys sparred Thursday in their closing arguments to the jury in the trial of Eric Hunt, a 24-year-old New Jersey man facing a wide swathe of charges, including attempted kidnapping, from San Francisco prosecutors.

Hunt's attorney John Runfola argued that Hunt's actions did not constitute an attempt to kidnap, assault or threaten Wiesel, and that Hunt was not a racist or anti-Semitic.

Runfola instead contended that his client suffers from a bipolar disorder and was suffering a psychotic episode in early 2007, when he packed up his car and a $10,000 inheritance from his grandmother, followed Wiesel to Florida and then to a conference in San Francisco to try to extract a confession that Wiesel's memoir of his experiences during the Holocaust was fraudulent.

"Not because Eric's a bad person, but because he was sick," Runfola said.

Assistant District Attorney Alan Kennedy asserted that Hunt has "very negative feelings towards (Wiesel), and to Jews in general." He said Hunt had been stalking Wiesel for weeks in order to try to force Wiesel to admit that the Holocaust was a lie.

Hunt, even if he had been suffering from a mental disorder, could still be held liable for forming the intent to commit the alleged crimes, Kennedy said.

Hunt is charged with several felonies, including attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, elder abuse and stalking, as well as special allegations of hate crimes.

He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and would face a second trial if convicted of any of the charges, to determine his sanity at the time of the Feb. 1, 2007, incident.

Runfola said Hunt, "a lost soul," had been upset by world events and wanted to prevent World War III, after which he thought he would be elected president.

"Eric's dream or delusion," said Runfola, "was to become a success."

Runfola said Hunt was "not the face of the modern Holocaust deniers movement," a group of people that Runfola referred to as "scum."

"I don't know about you," Kennedy later responded to the jury, "but I don't know what the face of a Holocaust denier is."

"But I know what the writing of a Holocaust denier looks like," Kennedy said, pointing at a five-page document that Hunt reportedly posted on a Web site promulgating Holocaust denial, five days after the episode at the former Argent Hotel in San Francisco.

The essay, which became a significant piece of evidence in the case, outlined Hunt's alleged motivation for the confrontation, and referred to Wiesel as "a genocidal liar" whose published memoir about the Holocaust, "Night," "is almost entirely fictitious," the document said.

The 79-year-old Wiesel testified during the trial that he had been shocked and frightened by the encounter, during which Hunt repeatedly asked him for an interview in a hotel elevator, and when Wiesel refused, pulled him out onto the sixth floor, where Hunt had rented a room.

Wiesel began screaming and Hunt fled, leaving his car and identification at the hotel. Hunt was arrested in a New Jersey mental hospital about two weeks later.

Runfola assailed the police investigation of the case as "sloppy work" and said Hunt had been overcharged by prosecutors, even questioning whether there may have been political motives by a District Attorney's Office eager to increase its conviction rate.

"This is way over the top," said Runfola. "The government has to be respected, but also watched."

Runfola, who called Wiesel "one of the greatest people on the face of the earth," asked bluntly, "If these same things would have happened to any other person, do you think we'd be here?"

"He's right in one respect," Kennedy shot back. "Not that it's overcharged, but he's right that this case would not be the same case if somebody else were in the elevator with Mr. Hunt."

The charges, Kennedy said, came "not because Professor Wiesel chose to be a victim in this case."

"Mr. Hunt is the one who chose his victim," Kennedy said.

Hunt, said Kennedy, "had made the choice long before...to get him into a hotel room, to make him confess that the Holocaust, and his book 'Night,' was a lie."

"He made a choice. He took action," Kennedy said.

Wiesel, for his part, has said that he would accept whatever verdict the court decides.

The jury will begin deliberating on the case Friday morning.