Who is Ernst Zundel
And Why is He in Jail?

Ernst Zundel has been held without charge in solitary confinement in Canada for 2 years without a charge, and now deported to Germany on the pretext that he is a threat to national security. In fact, this 65-year-old German-born writer, publisher and civil rights activist is a political prisoner and a victim of great injustice.

Who is this man, and why is his case important?

Zundel was arrested at his home in Tennessee on Feb. 5, 2003, where he had been living peacefully with his wife, Ingrid Rimland, on the pretext that he missed an interview date with immigration authorities. Two weeks later he was deported to Canada, even though his wife is an American citizen.

Claiming that he is a national security threat, Canadian authorities have been holding Zundel since Feb. 19. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — something like the American FBI — supports this charge by citing tenuous and years-old ties by Zundel to “white supremacist” groups. While acknowledging that he is not violent himself, CSIS also argues that material published by Zundel might cause “like-minded individuals to engage in violence.”

There is absolutely no basis for the “security threat” charge. Zundel’s life is an open book. He is a peaceful man with no record of violence. During the 40 years he lived in Canada, he was never convicted of a crime. In fact, he has himself been a victim of hate and violence. He survived at least three attempts on his life, including a devastating arson attack against his residence.

Jewish groups are demanding that Zundel be deported to Germany, where he faces years of imprisonment for the “thought crime” of “denying the Holocaust.” (“Holocaust denial” is against the law in Germany, France, Switzerland and some other European countries.)

Zundel is in prison not because his views are unpopular, or because he’s a “security risk.” He’s in prison because Jewish groups want him there. He’s a prisoner because he promotes views that the Jewish-Zionist lobby considers harmful to its interests.

This lobby is the decisive, critical factor in the decades-old campaign to silence him. The only sustained and institutionalized effort to imprison him has come from this lobby, which includes the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, and the League for Human Rights of B’nai B’rith (with the Anti-Defamation League, its counterpart in the US).

A few prominent Canadians have been speaking out against the unjust treatment of Ernst Zundel.
One such person is Bill Dunphy, a veteran investigative journalist and editor for the daily Hamilton Spectator. He spent six years probing Canada’s “white supremacist” movement, and got to know Zundel personally. Although he has no sympathy for Zundel’s views, in a hard-hitting column (Hamilton Spectator, May 14) he told readers:

“Our government has seized and branded Ernst Zundel, stripped him of his human rights, tried him in secret and found him wanting, and will now hand him over to a foreign government anxious to throw him in jail...

“... Zundel — who did this country a favour by wiping off the books our disgraceful False News laws — has never once been convicted of a criminal offence in this country, never once found to have violated the hate crime laws that rest snugly around the throat of free expression in this country.

“Calculating correctly that there was no political cost, no ‘down side’ to slipping on the jackboots to kick a reviled old man out of our country, our government cobbled together their best insults and innuendo, and Lord knows what secret ‘evidence,’ and branded Ernst Zundel a threat to national security.

“I know this man, his local and international contacts and I know this movement. And after reading the 58-page ‘unclassified’ summary of the government’s case, I can assure you there is no justice here. Their ‘evidence’ is riddled with errors and misinformation, hearsay and inflammatory innuendo. Dead men walk again, and the shattered bits of shoddy secret networks long since collapsed under the weight of their own ineptitude are made whole and menacing once again. It is a shameful piece of dishonest, unreliable tripe.”

The trendy Toronto weekly Eye pointed out in an editorial (May 15) that “declaring Zundel a terrorist now is not the result of any startling new information,” but rather “it has to do with political pressure ...” The paper added:

“The new security certificate admits Zundel has ‘virtually no history of direct personal engagement in acts of serious violence.’ It labels him a terrorist partly because he ‘seeks to destroy the multicultural fabric and underpinnings of Canadian society.’ Citing opposition to official multiculturalism as a type of terrorism risks expanding the war on terror to include everyone to the right of Pierre Trudeau.

“Anti-terrorism provisions should not be used as a catch-all solution. Misapplying terminology in this way damages its credibility, and undermines the efforts against real terrorism. It has also, of course, damaged the integrity of our refugee system.”

Similar concerns have been voiced by the daily Times Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia. In an editorial, “Even Zundel Merits Fairness” (May 9), the paper declared:

“... The way the federal government is trying to get rid of Zundel is wrong — it is using law that is so sweeping in its scope that it may be, as Zundel’s lawyer Doug Christie argues, unconstitutional. It would allow him to be deported on evidence that amounts to mere assumption and subject him to a kangaroo court process where no defence can be mounted.

“The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service calls Zundel the patriarch of Canada’s white supremacist ‘movement.’ It argues he is a risk to national security — a finding essential for his deportation under this procedure — because he is trying to ‘destroy the multicultural fabric and underpinnings of Canadian society.’

“... Most Canadians would be surprised to learn that the country’s multicultural fabric could be torn apart or society toppled by Zundel’s rants which are not, in fact, broadcast widely. But this is the basis for CSIS’s security certificate against Zundel.”

The Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE), a leading free speech advocacy group, is demanding Zundel’s immediate release. “Mr. Zundel is quite literally a political prisoner,” says CAFE director Paul Fromm, who has also been acting as Zundel’s legal representative in his detention hearings. “He is being held in solitary confinement solely for the non-violent expression of his political views.”

The allegation that Zundel might be a threat to national security “is mischievous nonsense,” says Fromm. “Zundel has been politically active in Canada for 40 years. He’s a public figure. His writings and speeches are available on-line. He’s been investigated for years by the police. He’s an open book. Zundel has never advocated or practised violence, nor have his followers,” Fromm adds. “He’s a pacifist and a publisher.”

A Life of Struggle

Ernst Zundel, a towering figure in the worldwide Holocaust revisionist movement, was born in 1939 in a small town in the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany. He emigrated to Canada at the age of 19, where he soon married and became the father of two sons. It wasn’t long before he made a name for himself as a successful graphic artist whose work appeared, for example, on the front cover of Canada’s national news magazine, Maclean’s.

Setting aside a thriving career, he resolved to dedicate himself to the great task, as he sees it, of redeeming the sullied reputation of his fellow Germans. Through his Samisdat publishing house he distributed worldwide a prodigious quantity of books, booklets, leaflets, newsletters, and audio and video cassettes. Simon Wiesenthal, the well-known “Nazi hunter,” has called Zundel the world’s number one distributor of allegedly dangerous literature and cassettes.

He has written countless booklets, newsletters and essays. He is a prodigious publisher, a one-man public relations firm, and an able public speaker and organizer. A dauntless leader in struggle against apparently insurmountable odds and seemingly invincible adversaries, no revisionist is more tenacious, dedicated and courageous.

Ernst Zundel, who sometimes describes himself as a "Swabian peasant,” is an outgoing, good-humored man who is blessed with a rare combination of unflagging optimism and practical ability. He maintains this infectious spirit even under very trying conditions. He is an unusually alert and sensitive individual with a keen understanding of human nature. He knows how to persuade, cajole and encourage his supporters to give their best for the greater good. He inspires confidence, loyalty and affection.

Zundel is probably best known for his central role in the “Holocaust Trials” of 1985 and 1988. He was brought to court in Toronto on a charge of “publishing false news,” and specifically for publishing a reprint edition of a booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die?.

To wage the legal battle that was forced upon him, he brought together an impressive international team of revisionist scholars, legal specialists, researchers, and many others. From numerous libraries and archives in North America and Europe, this group assembled at “Zundelhaus” one of the most impressive collections of evidence anywhere on this chapter of history.

Zundel’s two lengthy trials — the 1985 trial lasted two months, and the 1988 trial lasted four months — have been the closest thing anywhere to full scale debates on the Holocaust issue. For the first time ever, “Holocaust survivors” and Holocaust historians were closely and critically questioned under oath about their claims and views.

Among those who testified on Zundel’s behalf in the two trials were Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Mark Weber, William Lindsey, Udo Walendy, and Bradley Smith. As a result of the two trials, an enormous quantity of compelling evidence refuting the Holocaust extermination story was presented to the court and thereby was made part of the permanent public record. The most important of this evidence was the historic testimony of American gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter about his on-site forensic examination of the alleged extermination gas chambers in Poland.

Zundel was found guilty in the 1985 trial, but the verdict was set aside by the provincial appeals court. It ruled that the judge in that trial had, among other things, given improper instructions to the jury, and had improperly excluded defense evidence. In May 1988, at the conclusion of the second Zundel trial, the jury declared him guilty. A few days later, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment.

On appeal, Canada’s Supreme Court threw out the conviction, declaring on August 27, 1992, that the archaic “false news” law under which he had been convicted was a violation of the country’s Charter of Rights. This was not only a personal vindication by Canada’s highest court; Ernst Zundel secured an important victory for the rights of all Canadians.

Zundel’s next great legal battle was fought out before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Toronto on charges, instigated by Jewish groups, of promoting “hatred or contempt” against Jews through the “Zundelsite” Internet web site (http://www.zundelsite.org/), operated by Ingrid Rimland from the United States. In this legal action, as the Tribunal’s presiding Commissioner declared, the truth or validity of the supposedly “hateful” items was not a consideration. The Tribunal ultimately ruled against Zundel, declaring the “Zundelsite” to be unlawful.

After four decades in Canada, including a failed effort to acquire Canadian citizenship, he moved to the United States, where he married Ingrid in January 2000. For two years they lived quietly in the mountain region of eastern Tennessee.

Of this remarkable man, Robert Faurisson wrote in 1988: “Zundel may once again go to prison for his research and beliefs or be threatened with deportation. All this is possible. Anything may happen when there is an intellectual crisis and a realignment of historical concepts of such a dimension. Revisionism is the great intellectual adventure of the end of this century. Whatever happens, Ernst Zundel is already the victor.”

Mark Weber
Mark Weber (weber@ihr.org) is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He was born in Portland, and was educated in his home town, Chicago, Munich and Bloomington (Indiana). The IHR is a not-for-profit educational and publishing enterprise dedicated to truth and accuracy in history. For further information, see the IHR web site (http://www.ihr.org/), or write to: IHR, P. O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. This essay originally appeared in the Community News (P.O. Box 191677, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA. thetruthisback@yahoo.com).

Statement from Ernst Zundel’s Lawyers:
This statement concerns the pending deportation of 65 year old Ernst Zundel, who lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000, who has no criminal record in Canada and who faces no criminal charges in Canada.

Mr. Zundel has been in solitary confinement for 2 years and is about to be deported after a largely secret proceeding against him. The Crown and the presiding judge met secretly throughout his case, in the absence of Mr. Zundel and his lawyers. The Crown repeatedly presented evidence and made arguments to the judge in a Star Chamber type proceeding.

At the public proceeding, Mr. Zundel was told literally hundreds of times, when he asked for specific evidence of the case against him, that there was “nothing in the unclassified materials” . He was repeatedly blocked from asking questions of witnesses on the basis of “national security".

The presiding judge made repeated serious errors, forgot submissions and repeatedly misstated the appropriate legal test about what evidence should be kept secret. The same judge then evaluated the secret evidence.

Mr. Zundel complained of reasonable apprehension of bias by that judge. The same judge rejected Mr. Zundel’s argument and later ordered him deported.

The Federal Court of Appeal rejected his appeal regarding bias. It appears that the Crown will not wait to see whether the Supreme Court of Canada will hear the further appeal Mr. Zundel has already filed on the bias issue. The Crown will deport him NOW.

The Supreme Court of Canada has been asked, in Mr. Adil Charkaoui’s case, to consider the constitutionality of the law which allows secret evidence by which Mr. Zundel is deported. The Crown will not wait until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear that appeal. If the law is ultimately ruled to be unconstitutional, Mr. Zundel will likely hear about it from a German jail cell.

Probably no one cares because Mr. Ernst Zundel is notorious and reviled. The powerful and the popular do not need to rely on the fairness of our legal system. The marginalized and the reviled do. Our system has failed Mr. Zundel. We should care. But we fear most of us don’t give a damn.

Mr. Zundel will not initiate any further court proceedings in Canada. His repeated request that Canadian courts recognize his rights to basic fairness and justice have been unanswered. He will not beg for those rights.

Mr. Zundel has gone through the entire security certificate process, unfair though it was, to a conclusion. He has no right to appeal or to judicial review. He has gone to every available level of court in Canada.

For 42 years, he has vigorously defended his freedom of expression within the Canadian justice system. All legal avenues have now been exhausted, as has his faith in the Canadian justice system and this security certificate system, which has been characterized by a Canadian journalist, after witnessing part of Mr. Zundel’s proceeding, as a “frightening charade of justice".



Peter Lindsay,
Chi-Kun Shi.
Counsel for Ernst Zundel
http://am.novopress.info/index.php?p=239

TORONTO - Zundel  was deported from Canada on Tuesday March 01, 2005  and immediately taken into custody by authorities in his native Germany, where he faces charges of "denying the Holocaust" and "inciting hatred" via the Internet, immigration officials said. Ernst Zundel, 65  was turned over to German authorities, said Helen Leslie, a spokeswoman for Canadian Border Services Agency in Ottawa. "We are committed to removing people who are found to be a security threat as soon as practical," she said.

German authorities had said he would be arrested for decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeated denials of the Holocaust, which is a crime in Germany.

Zundel was arrested by German police at Frankfurt airport and taken to the southwestern city of Mannheim, where he was to spend his first night back in his homeland in police custody, local police spokesman Elmar Ludwig told The Associated Press. His arraignment was set for Wednesday.

Zundel's attorney, Peter Lindsay, said his client was held in near-solitary confinement for two years while and authorities determined whether he posed a security risk to Canadians.

A Canadian judge ruled last week that Zundel's activities were not only a threat to national security, but "the international community of nations" as well.

"Zundel's day of reckoning has finally come," said the Jew Frank Dimant, executive vice president of the Jewish maffia organization B'nai Brith Canada. The group had been at the forefront of efforts to have Zundel deported.

The Jewish Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish Maffia  group, said Zundel's likely trial would help to educate younger generations in Europe.

"Let's give him another 15 minutes of fame, if the trial can expose how Holocaust denial comes about," said Cooper.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry said Monday that Mannheim prosecutors were able to open a case against Zundel because his Holocaust-denying Web site is available in Germany.

Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials twice rejected his attempts to obtain Canadian citizenship, and he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., until he was deported back to Canada in 2003 for "alleged immigration violations"!

Since the late 1970s he has operated Samisdat Publishing, one of the leading distributors of  revisionist informations  and, since 1995, has been a key content provider for a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial.

Zundel is a peaceful man with no criminal record against him in Canada. Lindsay has challenged the constitutionality of the security certificate review process, saying it violated his client's right to free speech and association.

A Canadian law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, allows the government to hold terrorism suspects without charge, based on secret evidence that does not have to be disclosed to a suspect or his defense.

Lindsay said he last spoke to his client on Monday.

"He was feeling disillusioned with a legal system that had subjected him to a largely secret trial," Lindsay said.

Zundel has had a four-decade battle with Canadian authorities. He was convicted of "spreading false news" (revisionism) in 1985, a conviction that was upheld in an Ontario appeals court in 1988, Lindsay said. The Supreme Court in 1992 struck down the law that had found Zundel guilty, however, calling it a violation of freedom of expression.

"He's now been deported to a country where he's going to be prosecuted for something our Supreme Court of Canada has decided is not a crime"

Born in Germany to a lumberjack and a devout Christian, Ernst Zundel came to Canada at the age of 19. His public profile as a Revisionist grew in 1980, with the publication of a pamphlet "Did Six Million Really Die?".  Based in Toronto, Zundel's company, Samisdat Publishers, producing materials supporting his views.

TORONTO—Imprisoned revisionist dissident Ernst Zündel will be deported  immediately as a "danger to Canadian security," a Federal Court of Canada judge has ruled.

The Canadian Justice Pierre Blais smoothed the way to expel Zündel on the grounds that he is a threat to national security.

No appeal is possible under the controversial national security certificate procedure.

The Jewish Zionist judge Ian Buckley called Zündel "a Hitler sympathizer and a danger to  society". In a 64-page decision, he condemned the revisionist dissident for his "extremist Revisionist views."

According to this Jewish judge from the Canadian Government's court submission, "Zündel is a national security threat. (!!) Even though the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service document admits that the lifelong pacifist has "virtually no history of direct personal engagement in acts of serious violence," they contend that his alleged connections with other individuals and groups constitute a threat to Canadian security." One of the organisations named is the British National Party, which has just once again demonstrated its commitment to the democratic process by widespread participation in local government elections. Another gripe of Zündel's accusers is that his website has a link to Ahmed Rami's Radio Islam site, which they claim "calls for total war against Zionism." Ian Buckley wrote: "I have also reviewed conclusive evidence that Mr. Zündel maintained close ties with Sweden-based revisionist Ahmed Rami and his Radio-Islam Internet page, website to which the Zundelsite kept a hyperlink. In 1990, Mr. Rami was sentenced to six months of imprisonment in Sweden for anti-Semitism. Regardless of Mr. Rami's criminal record, as well as his notoriety as one of the most virulent Islamic voices against Israel and being labelled as the most dangerous anti-Jewish in Sweden...".

 A reasonable person might say that Rami is entitled to his opinion about an ideology that has waged 55 years of total war against his own people, and this has nothing much to do with Zündel in any case. But, as is so often the case these days, even when the supposedly neutral legal system is concerned, it all comes down to money and power. The Canadian press - largely owned by one Isidore Asper - has been even worse, brandishing scare-words in nearly every article about the Zündel case - ‘white supremacist’, ‘anti-semite’, even ‘terrorist’.

I once watched a Channel Four documentary which featured famed ‘Holocaust survivor’ Kitty Hart debating with three or four American revisionists/nationalists. My first reaction to the Americans - to use their own idiom - was: "These guys are nuts!" It was not until later that I came to realise that the situation was by no means as clear-cut as I had been led to believe by official versions of events. Now - and here I address myself to those who still believe the orthodox version of WWII history - if indeed "this guy is nuts," then why the frenzied attempts to shut down his website? Why all the measures of dubious legality - and plain illegality - to railroad Zündel to Germany to face a possible 10-year jail sentence just for his opinions? One could, if one were so inclined, construct a history of the war in North Africa in which the Allies were murderous maniacs, and the Germans and Italians decent, chivalrous fighters. For the only example of what could be called a war-crime in North Africa at that time came from the Allied side - an attack by the New Zealand Division on a field hospital in Matruh. Additionally, the USAAF, then as now, seemed to have an unfortunate habit of blowing up Arabs in mosques. But we all know and understand that history is written by the victors!

That ‘history’, based on half-truths, distortions and exaggerations, has been used for years to justify both the shameful oppression of the Palestinians and the enervation and decline of the West.

No wonder they fear Zündel so much. His wife Ingrid recently commented that Ernst is fighting against the forces of darkness. On first reading I thought this might be hyperbole, but now I tend to agree.
The Jewish Zionist judge Ian Buckley declare:
 " I have also reviewed conclusive evidence that Mr. Zündel maintained close ties with Sweden-based revisionist Ahmed Rami and his Radio-Islam Internet page, website to which the Zundelsite kept a hyperlink.
In 1990, Mr. Rami was sentenced to six months of imprisonment in Sweden for anti-Jewish critisism. Regardless of Mr. Rami's  notoriety as one of the most virulent anti-Jewish critisism  against Israel and being labelled as the most dangerous anti-Jewish  in Sweden."

"Mr. Zündel's activities are not only a threat to Canada's national security, but
 also a threat to the international community of nations," the judge  wrote.

Jews hailed the judge's decision and expressed the hope that deportation would be quick.

"We are consulting with the German Embassy in order to ascertain how soon they will accept Zundel back to his native country," said the Jew Frank Dimant, executive-director of the Jewish B'nai B'rith Canada.

Zündel supporter Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free _Expression, expressed a different opinion. He said he was "bitterly  disappointed" by the ruling, adding there was no evidence linking Zündel to violence.

"We're not dealing with a man who's a terrorist. He has the wrong political views," Fromm said from Winnipeg.

"That's a shocking departure from what most Canadians think of when they think of a terrorist."

Zündel, a longtime resident of Toronto, moved to the United States in 2001 and was trying to gain U.S. citizenship. He was arrested at his home in Tennessee on a minor visa technicality and deported to Canada in February 2003.

Despite his stay of four decades in Canada, during which he has had frequent legal and human rights battles, Zündel was never able to convert his landed immigrant status into citizenship.

The Canadian dissident has long argued that the so-called "Holocaust" was a blood libel against the German people and non-Jews generally, and that Jews have used the alleged atrocities as a way to extort money from their victims and to supporte Israel.

Solitary Confinement and Secret Proceedings

During the last two years Zündel has been kept in solitary confinement in a Toronto jail under a national security certificate. In keeping with the security certificate process, much of the evidence at his hearing was heard in secret and was not accessible to the defense!.

Zündel's detention under controversial provisions that allow for indefinite detention has prompted several rallies in his support, including some in recent weeks.

"Mr. Zündel expected this result," his Zionist attorney, Peter Lindsay, said after visiting his client in jail Thursday. "He didn't think he was going to get a fair shake."

Lindsay said that while representing the marginalized and unpopular is a lawyer's highest calling, it was a horribly disillusioning ordeal.

"I will never, ever do another security certificate case," he said. "A lawyer can play no meaningful role in the face of secret evidence. The lawyer's only role is as a fig leaf, to make the process look acceptable."

"He won't be asking for a stay, " Lindsay told The Canadian Press on Friday. "This is an unfair process. Everyone has turned their backs on him."

According to Lindsay, the courts have had numerous opportunities to remedy the "unfairness that he has been subjected to and they haven't."

Moreover, Lindsay said, Immigration officials aren't willing to let the top court decide whether his client's allegations of judicial bias are well-founded.

An Immigration Canada spokesperson said the department planned to deport Zündel to his native Germany as soon as possible. The Jewish B'nai Brith Canada, meanwhile, has demanded that he be deported immediately.

"He could be gone tomorrow," said Bernie Farber, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "All I know is, it's going to be quick. Canadians can breathe easier now."

Ernst Zündel
 Prisoner of War
By Horst Mahler

Ernst Zündel is to be warmly welcomed home by Germans who still want to be Germans.

The Jewish fighting force, ADL, has through its agitation ensured that Ernst Zündel has been a prisoner-of-war for over two years.

This place-change, from Canada to Germany, does not change anything for Zündel because in both countries the same enemy rules.

But on German soil this imprisonment generates new meaning because the US pretext that Ernst Zündel violated immigration laws has become irrelevant.

Also, the enemy in Germany cannot, as did the Canadian government, hide behind the feigned concern of 'national security'.

In Germany the enemy must openly declare, and thereby reveal its brutality that Ernst Zündel denies the details known legally as 'public knowledge' (Offenkundigkeit -judicial notice) of the Holocaust, and that he demands incontrovertible evidence to support the allegation that Germans on racial grounds, and by use of the insecticide

Zyklon B, systematically exterminated millions of Jews.

Only after Ernst Zündel emigrated to Canada did he begin critically to analyze the anti-German atrocity propaganda, and for over a decade in the Canadian court system successfully fought for his right to search for historical truth.

He has thereby become a respected world-wide symbol of the unbroken will, the human spirit's continuing search for truth.

The energy and firm conviction that radiate from this prisoner will convince more and more Germans who still want to be Germans to participate in the battle against the 'judicial notice' of the Holocaust.

He will therefore be an example for these Germans who will assemble and with truth move against the strongholds of our enemy.

Truth will set us free.

Horst Mahler

Imagine that you're 65 years old and you're in jail. In solitary confinement. You are strip-searched whenever you see your lawyer. Once before. Once after. For two years.

Imagine that you're there because two politicians signed a piece of paper ("security certificate") saying that you are a security risk. You are not charged with a crime. You don't have a criminal record. You have lived in Canada for 42 years.

Imagine that those two politicians don't have to be right, so long as a judge thinks that they are "reasonable". So long as they are "reasonable", they can deport you to a country where you go to jail for saying something that you have the right to say in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada had promised you that right.

Imagine that the prosecutor and the judge get to meet secretly without you and your lawyer and you never find out what they did in secret, what they read, who they saw. Again and again.

Imagine that your lawyer thought he was at a critical point in your trial. He thought the lunch break was longer then usual. Turns out the judge and the prosecutor were having a secret session again while you had lunch. They refuse to tell you or your lawyer what happened.

Imagine that you are accused of causing violence so bad that you are a danger to Canadian national security. When you ask when and where, they say: can't tell you. You ask why not, they say: national security.

Imagine that the judge making so many mistakes that it took more than 100 pages of transcripts to show them all. Imagine the judge making the same mistakes again and again. And always to your detriment. Imagine this judge having the power to deport you and you have no right of appeal.

Imagine that a prominent civil libertarian tells you this process is wrong and he will stand with you to say so, only to back out at the last minute.

Imagine that he comes back as soon as you were deported, condemning this process as your plane left Canada.

Imagine that a judge says she thinks this process is unfair to you and will say so in court, only to change her mind at the last minute.

Imagine that a newspaper counts the number of security certificates and yours is never included. Imagine the moment you have been deported, everyone talks about how awful and illegal security certificates are.

Imagine that the media is suddenly interested in you, as soon as they are sure that you will be deported. Your deportation and upcoming jail time is reported in meticulous detail.

Imagine that this is Canada in 2005 and you've been named in a security certificate.

Imagine that everyone says that security certificates are a disgrace to Canada but somehow it was fine to use one on you.

Imagine that you may be Ernst Zundel, or you may be someone with an opinion disliked by many.

Peter Lindsay & Chi-Kun Shi,

counsel to Ernst Zundel


 

Right to the end, the Canadian state has shown itself to be mean spirited and paranoid in its handling of political prisoner, pacifist publisher Ernst Zundel.  Co-counsel Chi-Kun Shi wrote early today: “Ernst was taken from Metro West this morning at 5 am. The person at Border Services, Mr. Gordon Morris, who was in charge of the deportation and said would advise us once Ernst had left is not available until March 3, 2005.” It should be noted that Morris had promised to advise Peter Lindsay and Ms Shi when Mr. Zundel was airborne. He must have had a two-day symposium at Tim Horton’s Donuts that prevented him from fulfilling even this minimal courtesy. His behaviour is typical of the poxy Canadian bureaucracy.

Family members and lawyers are normally advised of the flight and time of a deportation. Once again, the Ottawa tyranny’s laughable obsession with “national security” intervened. What real national security concern was there? Did they really think Peter Lindsay would go berserk in the airport lounge and start beating passengers senseless with his briefcase. No, “security” had nothing to do with it, only the convenience of the human rights abusers who wouldn’t want witnesses or photographs of a political prisoner being loaded on to a plane.

So, like a typical totalitarian state, the political prisoner was rousted from his bed before dawn and whisked to the airport where, apparently, he was flown in a chartered plane to Germany, and, then,  taken to Mannheim. We learned he had arrived about 10:00 p.m. German time.

A number of civil libertarians are now expressing uneasiness about the secret trials and the summary deportation of a non-violent man, labeled as a terrorist. This concern should be treated with the utmost scorn. These shameless phonies have had nearly two years to get on board and join the fight against secret trials. Alan Borovoy, the big noise with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, was called many times by one of the Zundel lawyers. While in the office, he refused to take her calls.

Ernst Zundel has become a mirror to look at ourselves and it’s not pretty. These secret trials are the real enemy to civil liberties.

Paul Fromm

Editor's Note:  We have reported on the imprisonment of Ernst Zundel in the past on Axis of Logic. Well now, the Zionists have finally got their way with the life of this 65 year old artist who never committed a crime. His wife, Ingrid has worked very, very hard over the last few years, fighting for her husband's freedom. But the zionists have had their way. They were able to successfully twist enough arms in the U.S. to have him imprisoned in the U.S., then deported to Canada where he remained in prison for 2 years, without a charge. Now the zionist pressure has been applied successfully on the Canadian judicial system to have Mr. Zundel deported to Germany. In Germany, he will be tried for "Holocaust Denial" - a crime enacted in Germany under pressure from the Zionists. We agree with Kim Petersen's article (below) - that Ernst Zundel's case is an issue of free speech, pure and simple. If you have an opinion about the treatment Ernst Zundel has received from the U.S. and Canadian Governments, we would like to hear it!?   

There is a concerted right-wing effort to clamp down on liberal academics in the US. The attacks on M. Shahid Alam and Ward Churchill serve distinct notice that free-speech rights may be constitutionally protected on paper, but those rights are fragile.

The assault on free speech is not confined to the US. Canadian security bills enacted following 9-11 have severely curtailed freedoms enjoyed by Canadians. Several Muslim Canadians have been rounded up along with one infamous historical revisionist.

Sixty-five-year-old graphic artist Ernst Zundel, clad in an orange jumpsuit, sits on a pile of documents (because he is not allowed a chair) and sends off his last missives written with pencil stubs from his prison cell. He has just passed his second year of incarceration without charge. This prisoner is deemed to be a national security risk to Canada although he has no criminal record and is avowedly a Christian pacifist.

Zundel and his supporters have characterized his situation as a "political kidnapping disguised as a deportation, based entirely on drummed up charges." The situation was allegedly stacked against Zundel.

Once two cabinet ministers signed the draconian national security certificate, Zundel was denied the right to cross-examine his accusers or to know all the evidence against him. The Crown needed only to convince Federal Court Justice Pierre Blais (a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service head) that it was not unreasonable for two cabinet ministers to think Zundel might be a terrorist. Now, Zundel has abandoned his fight to stay in Canada and is slated for early deportation to Germany, where he will be immediately arrested and tried for his controversial views on the World War II Holocaust.

Zundel's lawyer Peter Lindsay said authorities had informed him there would be no wait for a Supreme Court of Canada review of his allegation of judicial bias or rule on the constitutionality of Canada's anti-terrorism laws. Lindsay condemned the legal process as "unfair." Said Lindsay, "We should care. But ... most of us don't give a damn."

Blais ordered the expulsion of Zundel, having determined him to be a hate-monger and threat. "Zundel's activities are not only a threat to Canada's national security but also a threat to the international community of nations," opined Blais.

Zundel's notoriety stems from his challenging the conventional history of the World War II Holocaust. He does not deny European Jews were persecuted: "The Jewish community has been victimized, no doubt in my mind - by National Socialist Germany; they were robbed of their human rights. - I say Germans should pay restitution, material restitution Š moral restitution to Jewish institutions."

The German-born Zundel was at one point enjoying a comfortable, well-to-do life in Canada based on his success as a graphic artist. But he gave that up when he took it upon himself to correct what he saw as inaccuracies in World War II history. Said Zundel, "I owe it to myself, as a person, to humanity, to tell this truth as I found it, and as I know it-to submit it to people. I don't ask people to love me. I don't ask people to even agree with me. I don't ask people anything but to let me state my case and then for them to reflect on it."

Zundel objects to the holocaust being portrayed as an exclusively Jewish holocaust. "That Second World War was a Holocaust for everyone in it. - If we are to draw lessons from the Second World War, we must find out what led to this monstrous event - We must find out as people, as a planet, as human beings what really happened. Because otherwise we might well overlook when real holocausts are planned in the future."

"Holocausts come under the guise of laws, robbing people of their civil rights, their human rights, imprisoning them for ideas; that's how holocausts start," says Zundel.

Since promulgating his views on the World War II Holocaust, Zundel has been threatened, a recipient of a mail bomb, physically attacked, and suffered an arson attack that destroyed his home. To compound his misfortune, he has been financially bogged down defending himself and his controversial views in Canada's so-called justice system.

Canada does limit free speech rights when hatred is promoted against an identifiable group. Contrary to what is commonly thought, Zundel was never prosecuted under the "group hatred" act. He was charged under an old section of the Criminal Code pertaining to disinformation. This is incredulous, as Zundel obviously believes in the verisimilitude of what he is saying.

At his 1988 trial, Zundel was tried and cleared in the Supreme Court for disseminating "false news" in the form of a reprinted 28-page revisionist booklet Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Verrall (but penned under the name Richard Harwood). The False News Law was struck down.

Zundel stated that all his alleged crimes are Internet-related, dealing with the "Auschwitz Holocaust problem" and his defense of the German people. Vituperation is directed at the Zundelsite, which is adorned with Nazi-style flags featuring a "Z" fashioned after the swastika. The site carries the transcripts of his previous court appearances. Zundel considers this his legacy to revisionists.

The truth of his claims, however, was considered irrelevant. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is responsible for investigating "hate crimes," astonishingly concluded:

"The truth in some absolute sense really plays no role. Rather, it is the social context in which the message is delivered and heard which will determine the effect that the communication will have on the listener. It is not the truth or falsity per se that will evoke the emotion but rather how it is understood by the recipient."

Security Crack

On 18 February, a crack did emerge in the rigidity of Canada's national security laws. Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan-born alleged terrorist agent, was finally released from a ministerial security certificate detention after 21 months in jail.

Federal Court Judge Simon Noel ruled Charkaoui to be released on $50,000 bail-raised by several prominent Canadians-subject to a number of strict conditions such as obeying a curfew and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Charkaoui is, however, only one of several Muslim men being held under national security laws.

It was not enough to affect Zundel.

Free Speech Trumps Ideology

A Marxist-Leninist friend was surprised that I would write about the ordeal of Zundel. He advised, "Forget about him. He's a fascist and a Nazi." But he relented to the degree that, harkening to the wisdom of Martin Niemoeller, if Canadians remain silent about the human rights of Zundel then who will be there to speak out for their rights if and when their turn comes.

Zundel is not a sympathetic figure. He is an unabashed admirer of the Austrian-born and raised Hitler, who he lauds as "Germany's greatest son." It is unsure how this squares with his pacifist declaration. In the vein of Hitler, Zundel is also vehemently anti-Marxist. Marxism, according to Zundel, is a "psychopathic ideology." In addition, he adheres to a doctrine of white racial purity.

Nonetheless, his incarceration and upcoming deportation are morally wrong. It is relatively easy for progressives to stand up in defense of progressives when their free-speech rights are imperiled. The real test for progressives, however, is to defend free-speech rights of those whose views are anathema to progressivism.

Kim Petersen
A writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. He can be reached at kimpete@start.no