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Canada set to deport Holocaust denier

Associated Press, via MercuryNews.com, USA
Feb. 28, 2005
Beth Duff-Brown
www.mercurynews.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday February 28, 2005

TORONTO – Canadian authorities prepared to deport Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel back to his native Germany, and authorities there said Monday he faces arrest on charges of inciting racial hatred on his return.

Zundel, author of “The Hitler We Loved and Why,” has been held in a Toronto jail for two years while authorities determined whether he posed a security risk to Canadian society.

Federal Court Justice Pierre Blais ruled Friday that Zundel’s activities were a threat to national security and “the international community of nations.”

Zundel’s attorney, Peter Lindsay, said his client would not appeal and was expected to be deported as early as Tuesday.

Amelie Morin of the Canada Border Services Agency said Monday that Canada was “committed to removing people who are found to be a security threat as soon as practical.” But the timing of Zundel’s deportation could not be disclosed, she said, due to security concerns.

Zundel, a leading proponent of white supremacy, claims the Holocaust never happened.

That’s a crime in Germany and prosecutors in the southwestern city of Mannheim have issued a warrant for Zundel’s arrest, the federal Justice Ministry told The Associated Press on Monday.

Authorities were able to open the case because Zundel’s Web site is available in Germany, so he is considered to be spreading his message to Germans as well, said a spokeswomen for the Mannheim prosecutor’s office, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

“It could be any prosecutor’s office in Germany,” she said in a telephone interview. “If one looks at the Web site in Mannheim then the crime scene is also here.”

Zundel would be taken into custody when he returns to Germany while a judge reviews the case against him, the spokeswoman said.

In his decision released in Ottawa on Thursday, Blais called Zundel a racist hypocrite and said his Toronto home was a “revolving door” for some of the world’s most notorious white supremacists who have promoted violence and hatred against Jews and minorities.

Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials rejected his attempts to obtain Canadian citizenship in 1966 and 1994. 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 Nazi propaganda, and since 1995 has been a key content provider for a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial.

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

The Canadian security certificate law, passed after the Sept. 11 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.

Associated Press Writer David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.