The Zundelsite - Pre-Removal Risk Assessment, Absurdistan-Style

Aug 23, 2003

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

I did not send a ZGram yesterday because I was flooded with bounced return SoBig Virus messages - and did not want to aggravate the situation by adding to the disaster. Today's ZGram will make up for it in length - if not in clarity. I pulled it from the David Irving website and read it with a very heavy heart.

This is the first time I even saw this document. It is an important one, though. I wish I could have helped to write it, for it simply screams for clarity and precision. Unfortunately, that could not be - and as you read it, keep in mind that it was written in inhuman circumstances by a man pushed to the limits of his endurance while being trapped by a political monstrosity that calls itself a "democratic" government.

In simplest words, Ernst Zundel is straining against an injustice one can only call demonic. He has it out with politically subservient underling with not an ounce of independent thought who blithely ignored the evidence, painstakingly collected, that Germany is NOT a democratic government. This creature, says Ernst Zundel in far too many words, thinks nothing of sentencing a man to a lifetime of incarceration - by mouthing platitudes!

For what? For having "missed" a governmental agency interview that was never even scheduled?

Watch out how precedents are being set. Today it is Ernst Zundel. Tomorrow it could well be you.

[START]

(Paul Fromm prefacing:)

As one of the many legal works Ernst Zündel has had to research and prepare, with only a pencil stub, in his maximum detention cell, is the following Pre-Removal Risk Assessment. This is his response to the government's argument that he faces no danger should he be deported to Germany.

In the preface to this document, you'll notice the horrific prison conditions inflicted as punishment by the Canadian state in an effort to break Mr. Zündel.

Paul Fromm Director

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FREE EXPRESSION ________________________________________________________________

Submissions by the prisoner Ernst Zündel, July 25, 2003

Ernst Zündel
#2218-7604
Toronto West Detention Center
111 Disco Rd.
Box 4950
Rexdale, Ontario
M9W 1M3
Tel: (905) 354-2143

Supervisor, Niagara Falls CIC PRRA Unit 6080 McLeod Rd. Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada L2G 7T4

July 25, 2003

Observations, Arguments, Submissions and Conclusions.

Re: PRRA Report on me, Ernst Zündel, prepared by pre-removal risk assessment officer and dated 8 July 2003.

This document is prepared in my 24-hour maximum security lockup cell at the West Toronto Detention Center under the following conditions:

* I have no access to a photo copier, no pen, only a pencil stub, no highlighter, no paper clips, no stapler, no post-it-notes, no file folders, no self-adhesive address labels, no plastic tabs to mark individual file areas, no color dividers, no color paper, no way of binding my presentation or even a rubber band to hold the documents together; nor do I have my files at my disposal.

* All stools have been unbolted and removed from segregation cells. I write this response standing up or lying on my bed.

* My access to the telephone is tightly controlled and sporadic at best. I can call only a very limited number of people like my lawyers, my wife, my children, and some friends, if and when the guards consent to fetch the phone, slide it into the feeding hatch of my cell for an arbitrarily determined period of time. Since I have no watch and there is no clock, I never do know when my time is nearing its end or is up. Thus, I often have to terminate my conversations in mid sentence because the guards demand thephone back NOW! I can make only collect calls out which means if no one is at the number I have called because I only got access to the telephone after business hours, I am out of luck because answering machines cannot take collect calls. If I reach a secretary, he or she often is not authorized to take collect calls. Thus, I have no opportunity to leave a message even with my lawyers, my legal representative, family, friends, businesses, etc.

* I cannot make collect calls to cell phones from prison, neither to my lawyers or friends. This is a huge hurdle impossible to overcome.

This makes any communication with lawyers or friends uncertain, with the result that it has taken my sometimes a week before I was able to track down my lawyers, one of whom, Mr. Christie, lives and works in Victoria, B.C., 5,000 km away from where this jail is located, a three-hour time zone difference.

My lawyers do not speak German, a handicap in this case because the subject deals with a possible deportation to Germany and many of the documents, laws, newspaper articles, etc., I needed to draw in, would be in German.

I submitted all scraps of information I have been able to marshal via letters from prison to friends on the outside in my original PRE-REMOVAL RISK ASSESSMENT submissions. Since I have no access to a photo copier or carbon paper, I am criticizing Mr. Somerville's report, therefore, without access to the actual documents which I submitted in the original, as I had no chance of making copies of my submission.

Finally, to complete the listing of difficulties encountered by me in preparing this commentary on Mr. Somerville's PRRA report, I have not been able to speak to Mr. Christie for over a week because the Bell telephone conference call he had booked did not take place due to technical problems beyond my or the prison's control.

Mr. Christie seems to be traveling.

Thus, this report does not have the benefit of any lawyer's input.

There are several other difficulties which need to be recorded for history and the shameful treatment I have had to endure since February 19, 2003.

* Before I meet with my lawyers or visitors (segregated totally behind glass sometimes), outside of regular visiting hours, I am padded down, having to lean against the wall like in Hollywood movies.

* My pockets are searched, although I have had no contact with anyone.

* {More often than not], I have not been allowed by the guards to take along a pencil stub or a piece of paper to make notes of things I might have to do or write away for.

* When I am taken to the visitor's area, a Captain and two guards have to accompany me at all times. They sit in an adjoining room, observing me even when I meet visitors behind thick pains of bullet-proof glass! I am not able to take any notes. Not even toilet paper is allowed to blow my nose dripping from allergies.

* When visiting time is over, I am once again searched, leaning against the wall before I enter my cell, always minus running shoes which have to be left outside my cell in the hall, with my toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, and towel.

On Friday, the July 25, 2003, after meeting with Legal Agent, Paul Fromm - in an interview room, and under the watchful eye of a guard posted there the entire time, once again, without a pencil stub or a scrap of paper - when I came back from this totally observed visit by guards and a Captain, I was ordered to take off all my clothes one item at a time, hand it to the guard for thorough examination and, when I was stark naked, I was ordered to stick out my tongue, stretch up my arms, show the guard the soles of my feet, and bend down to touch my toes, showing him my rear end, I suppose, so he could see my anus, if I was hiding something.

Since I had nothing on me, he left me there standing stark naked in my cell, wondering about what had become the Canada of my boyhood dreams!

My response to Mr. Somerville's report takes place against this background and I want the Reviewing Assessment Officer and especially the Canadian public to know what my new reality in Canada is in 2003. Maybe, this is what Coderre, the immigration minister meant, "Just watch me" when asked [what] he and the government of Mr. Chretian intended to do with me. Actually, it should be what they intended to do TO ME!

Here then are my criticisms, observations, arguments, submissions and conclusions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pre-Removal Risk Assessment report produced by Mr. C. Somerville, and handed to me in prison by an Immigration Officer on July 8, 2003.

I do not know what educational or legal training or political science or history background or human rights legislation studies a PRRA Officer has to have to qualify him to hold such an important office in this area of Canada's immigration and refugee processes.

I raise this question because I am astonished - actually, alarmed would be a more appropriate word - when I read Mr. Somerville's superficial, perfunctory, casual, and callous treatment that he has given to my submissions and documents supplied to him in my initial submissions to the PRRA Unit on May 29, 2003.

The assessment he arrives at could only be the result of poor job performance, laziness or, what is far more likely, a politically-correct report about a well-known, albeit media-demonized, therefore unpopular dissident. The government in Ottawa, as Mr. Somerville's indirect employers, wants to be rid of [me] by one way or another, preferably under the guise of legality. This means is a National Security Certificate railroading me, making use of secret evidence, secret witnesses, in camera hearings with unidentified people where [the accused and his] attorney are not allowed to be present. We will not be told the names of these people nor shown any documents they submitted. We will not be given any transcripts of these proceedings - Possibly, if we are lucky, censored summaries only.

To my knowledge, no Security Intelligence Review Committee members - the watchdog of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, appointed by parliament, specifically to keep an eye on the activities of the spy service - is present to monitor these secret proceedings before a presiding judge. The accused has no effective way of probing, testing, or shaking this evidence or the witnesses because it is secret. The special Federal Court Judge appointed to hear a National Security Certificate case is the final arbiter of the evidence. There is no appeal allowed of this judge's decision which turns automatically into a deportation or removal order once issued.

This is why The Pre-Removal Risk Assessment report assumes such a crucial role in these types of proceedings, unprecedented in Canadian judicial history. The Pre-Removal Risk Assessment report can mean the difference to a slated deportee of a lifetime behind bars in some foreign land without Canada's Charter of Rights protection - or even a death sentence, either by torture, deprivation of freedom, inadequate health care or murder or execution - while in prison in some foreign land. This includes Germany!

Thus, these Assessment Reports should look very carefully at each individual's case, especially so in the case of political dissidents or human rights activists who have been a thorn in the side of repressive regimes where the deportee is being sent, as is the case with me with Germany.

That clearly must have been the intention of the Canadian Parliament when it drafted this important last-ditch review and assessment process.

It is for this reason above all that I find Mr. Somerville's report to be galling, for he displays not a hint of sensitivity or understanding of a human rights drama being played out and being [laid] bare to him by the documents and evidence supplied to him for study and reflection while preparing his report.

This is not some general overview of the political, judicial situation in a country allied to Canada in a military alliance. It is supposed to be a specific investigation and detailed report about an individual person - in this case me, Ernst Zündel - a vocal dissident against Germany's repressive regime for decades.

I have excoriated the current German's government's dismal human rights records when it comes to specific areas of German politics, history, and when it comes to the origins and foundations of Germany's current regime. I have made it amply clear and buttressed my claim with numerous documents, some exhaustive in nature and detail, that it is the State and its organs I have to fear because of the way the German State is constituted and the ideological foundations it rests on which are hostile to me.

Thus, the entire premise of Mr. Somerville's report, either intentionally or unintentionally, is flawed. His conclusions are in glaring error and dangerous to me!

I cannot turn to the police, the judiciary or any other agency of the German regime for protection - as was made logically and perfectly clear in the material supplied to Mr. Somerville at the PRRA Unit. This is what makes the wording and the glib reasoning of his assessment so shocking and also galling to me.

I will give just a few examples of this method used by Mr. Somerville. These include not focusing on the very real fears of persecution and mistreatment, buttressed by documents he and his office were supplied with by me. His conclusions when looking at the German situation are based, it seems, not on primary research but on official German government press releases, handouts and publications -- in other words German propaganda.

He uses a U.S. Senate Publication on the German human rights situation. Note how often it is used by Mr. Somerville in his footnotes, as compared to the sparsely used or referred-to documents I supplied based on the actual experiences of dissidents like myself before German courts, appeal courts or even the highest German Court, the Constitutional Court. The latest reference to these U.S. Senate documents is 2003.

I want to draw the attention of the reviewer to the fact that the United States Government has, since the attacks on New York and Washington, September 11, 2001, passed legislation in the form of its Patriot Act and adopted repressive measures; such as keeping thousands of people in prisons whose names are not divulged, who have no access to lawyers, whose families do not know where they are or whether they are alive or dead.

The United States has also re-activated the notorious Military Courts, staffed entirely by military personnel against whose decisions there are no appeals. The U.S. holds prisoners incognito in open-air, special camps in Guantanamo Bay - off limits to inspection by human rights bodies and, to my knowledge, even the Red Cross.

I find that Mr. Somerville's reliance almost exclusively on U.S. Government publications without serious investigation of his own on the ground unconscionable and questionable, given the dramatic changes in U.S. law. Of course, the German system is beginning to look "reasonable" when one compares it to what has happened to the human rights of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S.A. like myself and others in the hysteria of the post-911 attack era. I have personally experienced the treatment meted out to dissidents as revealed in the ongoing litigation in the U.S.A. at present in my recent deportation from there.

Mr. Somerville says about the German situation:

* "The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens."

* "Prison conditions generally met international standards."

* "The Basic Law prohibits arbitrary arrests and detention, and the government generally observed these prohibitions."

* "Bail exists but is seldom employed."

* "The Basic Law provides for an independent judiciary, and the Government generally respected this provision in practice."

* "The Basic Law provides for freedom of the press and the Government generally respected this right in practice."

* "The Law provides for freedom of assembly, and the Government generally respected this right in practice."

* "The law provides for freedom of association, and the Government generally respected this right in practice."

* "A wide variety of international and domestic human rights groups generally operated without government restrictions."

I count nine laws affecting the most important human rights of a population. The Assessment Officer takes refuge in the nonissue-specific word "generally". Not once does he mention the very specific documentation I was able to supply him with from inside my maximum security prison cell. This material shows in case after case how the German system grossly ignores and thus violates the political opinions, civil and human rights of its citizens, and especially those of dissident writers, broadcasters, and commentators like myself. He was supplied the evidence of this.

This, therefore, is not an oversight! Mr. Somerville had hundreds of pages of documents by researchers, mostly academic, peer review and heavily, meticulously footnoted, mostly in English. Thus, there can only be one explanation - which is that the very real evidence of anti-Democratic behaviour and tactics and the set-up of the post-war German vassal state (created by the Allied conquerors of Germany to suit their occupational goals and policies) did not fit either Mr. Somerville's private prejudices or what seems eminently more likely, it does not fit the Canadian liberal government's political agenda, which has, for several decades, been to criminalize me, their domestic German/Canadian human rights advocate, and have me deported to their NATO ally, Germany, for further persecution by prosecution.

More Evidence Ignored.

The Assessment Officer was supplied with explanations about the substance and, therefore, the differences between the Canadian and German anti-hate legislation, and also its comparison to international standards.

Nowhere in Mr. Somerville's Assessment Report is there any reflection, much less an understanding, of the vast difference, in substance and application between the Canadian and German laws. This difference in Germany affects the citizen's right to debate, discuss and air politically [and] historically sensitive topics like the holocaust.

This is the cause of the Zündel human rights case. Mr. Somerville glibly declares these German hate laws as being laws of "general application",whatever is meant by this odd terminology, and he opines that they are similar to Canada's hate laws - which they are possibly on the surface but certainly not in substance.

In Canada, the truthfulness of a statement made is a defence which can be raised [Ingrid's comment here: This applies to criminal prosecution but not to Human Rights type prosecutions where Truthi is NO defense!] as is also whether the intention of the accused was to raise a topic designed to remove a social ill by way of exposing it and in order to debate it in public so as to remove the ill.

I have no Criminal Code available to me in my cell and have not been able to reach my lawyers to get the exact wording of the hate sections in Canada's Criminal Code.

Mr. Somerville, in a footnote #31 on page 9, of his Report, gives the "Canadian Criminal Code, 2003, Pocket Criminal Code, page 35" for his faulty understanding or claim that Canada's hate laws are similar to Germany's abominations.

Nowhere is there any reference that he looked at, understood or even reflected on the crucial texts on this topic supplied to him or his office by me. Mr. Somerville simply says about the heart of the matter in the entire Zündel case and my submissions before him: "In Canada, there is similar legislation." (See page 9 of his report.)

A high school dropout would be held to a higher standard of analysis by his teacher than is applied here in a human rights case with international notoriety and also implications for the future in this hysterical era of "The War on Terror".

Mr. Somerville then imports from the German Government's arrest warrant against me an item I have never before heard raised by any Canadian prosecutor or judge in all my many court appearances over two decades in any Canadian court. It is the "Völkerstrafgesetzbuch".

This obscure document must be so rare that Mr. Somerville does not give us its English name or title, but simply takes, obviously at face value, what the German Police concocted in their arrest warrant issued - significantly on the day of my illegal deportation to Canada from the U.S.A. on February 17, 2003 at Ft. Erie, Ontario.

Let me reiterate: In spite of the more than ample evidence supplied to the PRRA Unit and, thus, to Mr. Somerville in my initial submission of May 29, 2003, about the dismal situation for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association for political/historical dissidents holding my particular point of view in Germany, Mr. Somerville ignores the evidence and whitewashes the German State. The fact that my activities in the publishing, speaking and broadcasting of my human rights activities over 43 years in Canada have led to no criminal convictions or convictions overturned by Canadian courts due to the protection of Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Mr. Somerville is of the opinion that it is perfectly alright that I should be sent off to Germany, where these words, spoken, written or broadcast would result in my immediate arrest and imprisonment for a minimum of five years, but more likely than not, for seven to ten to 15 or even 20 years, given Germany's judicial lawlessness in matters relating to Jews and the holocaust.

Mr. Somerville looks upon such typically German crimes as to "publicly deny an act under National Socialist rule" or "disparaging the memory of the dead", amongst others as alright, even though by any stretch of the imagination, there are no comparative statutes in Canadian criminal law.

There is also the matter of the holocaust topic. In Canada, at least for the moment, the holocaust is still perfectly legal to be discussed in public. In Germany, however, questioning the holocaust is punished by a five-year minimum jail term. In spite of the documentary evidence supplied to the PRRA office, Mr. Somerville simply does not seem to be able or could not care less how it impacts on my case and on my life, should I be deported to Germany from Canada!

Thoughtful readers and observers, especially people with an understanding of the marvel of Anglo-Saxondom's legal traditions, evolved over a thousand years, will be nothing but astonished once they reflect what is taking place now in Canada's politicized civil service and in its course, particularly the evidence heard in secret in camera proceedings in my case.

Therefore, I want to drive home the shocking state of affairs and danger posed by this alarming trend to the millions of naturalized Canadians from all parts of the globe and to permanent residents and landed immigrants like myself, [of whom] there are hundreds of thousands if not millions living in Canada. Make no mistake about it: The government has chosen me, the most media-demonized immigrant in the country, to get a precedent set to railroad others, using the spurious accusations that they are a threat to national security to this country for their ideas that happen to be disliked by a powerful lobby, not for any real crimes they might have committed.

Mr. Somerville also either does not comprehend or else willfully ignores my submissions and documentation, which make it perfectly clear that it is the politicized justice system, the political police called hypocritically the "Verfasserugsschutz" or "Constitutional police" who are a threat to people with my thoughts and beliefs. Thus, they will be my persecutors and oppressors and prosecutors. I can hardly turn to them for protection, as Mr. Somerville cynically suggests!

One of the most callous observations in this report, which is supposedly to assess the risks I would face if deported to Germany, is this one: "Evidence indicates punishment for the crimes the applicant is alleged to have committed range from fines to five years imprisonment. I do not find this punishment so draconian as to be completely disproportionate to the objective of the law".

It is not Mr. Somerville's job to speculate on such legal objectives.

Had Mr. Somerville done actual research on the way the Germans apply these laws, he would have quickly and easily found out, as illustrated by the Günther Deckert case, that the current Quisling state in power there uses the salami tactic of laying charges in political dissident cases by applying every six months to a year to the courts forever new charges to be added by treating any new phrase or sentence they may find uttered by me, even those uttered decades ago, but now on one of 800 nationalist web sites. The German censors, according to Mr. Somerville, say: "German officials estimated that there were approximately 800 Internet sites with what they considered objectionable and dangerous right wing extremist content.". Any sentence or item carried by any of these 800 web sites which purports to have been spoken, written, or broadcast by me legally in Canada or America, can add years, theoretically, up to five years for each offence to my sentence! This could mean four more charges could add 20 years!

Mr. Somerville does not consider this draconian or completely disproportionate.

Let me spell it out for you how draconian it is. It will mean a virtual life sentence for me for my political/historical beliefs about an alleged event called WWII which supposedly happened 58 years ago and about which I was critical in Canada or America where it was legal to think, write and broadcast this criticism 5000 km away. A virtual life sentence - and a Canadian bureaucrat cannot comprehend that this is more cruel and unusual punishment than it is meted out to Iranian dissidents by the Ayatollah Khomenini or Communist China would to dissidents caught in Tianenamin Square!

Really! Think about it!

Mr. Somerville had the effrontery to say of Germany: "The judiciary provided citizens with a fair and efficient judicial process." I supplied ample evidence to make this statement a bold-faced lie.

If Mr. Somerville doubted my claims, he could easily have verified them by some serious research. He would have found that all my expert witnesses, historians, academics with Ph.D.s from famous universities, which Canadian courts have accepted and qualified in criminal proceedings, were rejected by German courts, along with all other documentary evidence I tried to introduce in my court cases there. How can that be called "a fair judicial system", much less a democratic one by a Canadian official?

Mr. Somerville says that the Germans have an "efficient judicial process". The gall of this statement is shocking in light of the evidence I supplied to him. German Criminal Courts have abolished the taking down or recording verbatim the words uttered by all involved in a court case since 1977. Thus, there are no transcripts of the proceedings of the criminal cases in Germany! This, again, was pointed and explained in documents supplied with my initial PRRA report of May 29, 2003, to the PRRA office in Niagara Falls. There is not a lawyer, prosecutor or judge who would not at once realize that this medieval system, reverted back to by the Quisling state, is and has been used to produce the grossest miscarriages of justice. Evidence was supplied.

Yet none of it is reflected in the Somerville report. His naiveté about the vast difference between the two judicial systems, the Canadian and the German is astounding. The major difference is our legal tradition of setting an accused free on bail pending trial versus keeping someone locked up, often for lengthy periods in politically-motivated prosecutions while awaiting trial in Germany. There, only one out of a hundred accused ever gets bail.

Mr. Somerville glibly points out that the German state will compensate an individual in cases of acquittal. That THIS amounts a mere pittance paid by that state to a person [who] has been victimized, brutalized, deprived of the most fundamental human rights, the right to be free once again does not phase Mr. Somerville.

A man with such a mindset has no right to deal with questions of human rights.

In short, speaking as a German-Canadian human rights activist and writing from a maximum security 24-hour lockup cell in the Canadian Gulag, imprisoned for my thoughts and associations and words I have alleged to have written, spoken and broadcast, I find Mr. Somerville's Pre-removal Risk Assessment Report slipshod and totally unethical. It will serve as one more embarrassment to the people who are denying me my due process rights and who are trying to railroad me out of this country where I have worked and contributed as a perfectly law-abiding landed immigrant and permanent resident for 43 years. My treatment is one massive human rights violation!

These are my arguments.

My submissions are that another Pre-Removal Risk Assessment Officer be assigned to review the evidence, all of it, and do an independent, non-biased report - Based on the actual facts existing on the ground in Germany, which would await me after deportation there! A real risk assessment - not flimflam and bla-bla! This process, I understand, is the reason for doing this: to prevent violations and abuses of human and civil rights in countries to which Canada was deporting people. The process and the legislation were intended to safeguard human rights and not to espouse self-serving government propaganda, either for the Allied Quisling Occupation Regime now holding the German people in subjugation or a Canadian Government doing the bidding for a "voter segment" as George Jonas, the well-known Jewish-Canadian journalist recently so aptly called the government's national security certificate process against me. In short, pandering for votes in the next federal election!

Jewish votes, to be clear! On the part of the Liberal Government in Ottawa.

Sincerely,