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PRESS RELEASE
THREE-JUDGE PANEL IN
OHIO TO WEIGH ARGUMENTS FOR "GERMAN HERETIC"
Cincinnati, Ohio (1/13/2006)--The civil liberties claims of Ernst and Ingrid
Rimland Zundel will be heard January 24, 2007 by a three-judge panel in
Cincinnati, it was announced today by Zundels' lawyer, Bruce Leichty.
Ernst Zundel is the controversial German-born publisher whose views on the
"Holocaust" have put him at odds with mainstream historians and prompted his
detention and prosecution in Germany, where he faces a prison term of up to five
years for his speech.
The appeal to be heard in Cincinnati is not legally related to the German trial
but may still send an important signal about whether Zundel should have ever
been exposed to prosecution in Germany in the first place, says Leichty.
The Zundels and Leichty contend that Zundel was effectively kidnapped by U.S.
federal agents in February 2003 and that his deportation to Canada without a
court hearing was illegal under U.S. law, especially since he was awaiting
processing for U.S. permanent residence as the husband of a U.S. citizen, Ingrid
Rimland.
Ingrid Rimland has compared the seizure of her husband to the experience of
seeing her father seized by Stalinist secret police when she was a young girl
growing up in the Mennonite community of Halbstadt in the Ukraine. Rimland later
wrote a fictionalized account of her post-war sojourn as a refugee to a
Mennonite colony in Paraguay, The Wanderers, and spoke to a number of Mennonite
audiences about her experiences in the 1980's.
"Because of the lack of any genuine authority for Mr. Zundel's arrest and
removal, it is clear that he was targeted for his unpopular beliefs and for
daring to publicize them," says Leichty.
"Mr. Zundel can best be understood by Mennonites as a type of heretic that the
Western world bitterly fears and is not prepared to allow. In our culture,
theological heresy is no longer regarded as a threat, but an increasingly vocal
minority in the West wants to make political heresy or `hate speech' a crime."
A number of European countries criminalize speech that departs from certain
officially-approved accounts of the "Holocaust" and World War II. Besides Zundel,
two other historians, Germar Rudolf and David Irving, were held behind bars in
Germany and Austria for crimes consisting solely of speech. [Note: Irving has
since been released.]
Leichty notes that all of Zundel's conduct and speech was and is considered
legal in the United States, and that he was cleared of suspicion of any criminal
activity by the FBI in an investigation concluded shortly before the illegal
arrest in 2003, but that powerful forces acting within the U.S. government or to
influence the government were obviously "hell-bent" on expelling Zundel from the
U.S.
Comparing Zundel's kidnapping to the "extraordinary renditions" by the CIA of
persons of mostly Arabic origin, Leichty said, "The Court of Appeals in
Cincinnati will be asked to ensure that a political figure like Zundel cannot
simply be taken from this country without the constitutional protections that
residents of the United States have always enjoyed--including their day in
court." Zundel filed a petition for habeas corpus in Tennessee before he was
removed, but the federal judge in Knoxville handling that case denied his
petition without a hearing.
After another Cincinnati panel told the Knoxville court in 2005 that the
Knoxville court had to at least consider Zundel's petition, a hearing was held
in Knoxville in October 2005 at which Leichty and Ingrid Zundel appeared, but
the Knoxville court still ruled that it had no "jurisdiction" over Zundel's
habeas petition since Zundel had waived his right to any such relief upon
entering the United States under a program known as the "visa waiver program."
Zundels have pointed out repeatedly in their legal papers that Ernst Zundel's
last entry into the U.S. was not in fact under the visa waiver program--indeed
that the authority of the Attorney General to admit anyone into the U.S. under
the visa waiver program had lapsed as of the time of Zundel's last entry--but
that even if Zundel had entered as a "visa waiver" entrant, a federal court must
have jurisdiction under the United States Constitution to hear habeas claims of
someone in his position who is suddenly detained.
After he was deported to Canada in 2003, Zundel spent two years in solitary
confinement in Ontario while he was subjected to a trial to determine whether he
was a risk to the national security of Canada. Zundel spent almost all of his
adult years in Canada, where he established a successful business as a graphic
artist and became interested in politics. His activism for German causes brought
him into conflict with prominent Jewish groups in Canada and he spent years
litigating with the Canadian government over his speech, before moving to the
U.S. in 2000 to marry and live with Ingrid Rimland. His earlier trials in Canada
were the first trials where claims about the Holocaust were subject to testing
and cross-examination, and have in turn been the subject of a number of books
and videos.
His latest "national security" trial in Canada during the years 2003-05 allowed
the government to introduce secret evidence against him, and was presided over
by a former counsel to the Canadian national intelligence service. At the
conclusion of that trial, Zundel, a lifelong pacifist who has had numerous
associations with controversial dissidents, was labeled a racist and white
supremacist leader, and was declared a risk to Canada's national security. Ernst
and Ingrid Zundel have denied that they are racists or white supremacists,
although they acknowledge they are advocates of the virtues of European culture.
Ingrid Zundel and Leichty plan to speak to supporters and persons wishing more
information about the case at a meeting to be held in Cleveland on Monday,
January 22, at 7 p.m. at Ampol Hall, 4737 Pearl Road, Cleveland, OH
At that time, a documentary about Zundel's activism will also be shown.
Admission is FREE. For more information contact:
Ingrid Rimland Zundel, (865) 774-7756 / (865) 774-7758 (fax)
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