ZGram - 5/16/2003 - "The Zundel Case discussed in an important newsgroup"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

May 16, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

While we are awaiting the outcome of today's Zundel Bail Hearing, I 
thought that my readers would  appreciate a little spirit boost. 

One of my legal team members forwarded this list serve post to me.  I 
do not know this group, but it looks lawyerly to me - and I have 
asked to be added to their list.

[START]

Tuesday, 13 May 2003

Dear List Readers,

Especially for those among you who are practicing attorneys, but also 
for lay readers, the facts of the recent U.S. deportation 
of dissident writer Ernst Zundel to Canada will alarm you.  "Alarm," 
however, is not my primary motive in sharing this information with 
you. 

Rather, the Zundel case has much greater, shall we say, "evidentiary" 
value.  Evidence of what?  Unfortunately, the Zundel case serves 
as valuable evidence that authentic government tyranny is very much 
ascendant in our shining American "democracy" of 2003. 

In the enclosed press release from Zundel's family and attorneys, 
compare how the United States Immigration and 
Naturalization Service has acted to summarily arrest and 
summarily deport this perfectly LEGAL immigrant (who is NOT 
even ACCUSED of having committed any crime on U.S. soil, nor on 
Canadian soil) to how the U.S. "regime" offers serial hearings, 
appeals, and every conceivable form of procedural due process (and 
even amnesties) to millions of ILLEGAL immigrants from Mexico and 
elsewhere. 

("Equal" Protection, anyone?) 

For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Ernst Zundel is a Canadian 
citizen with no criminal record in Canada, and no criminal record in 
the United States.  He has a long history as a writer and publisher 
in Canada (and recently in the U.S.) of dissident political and 
historical tracts. 

Zundel's writings have quite understandably inflamed resentment 
and anger among many elements in Canada, the United States, and even 
overseas. 

Nonetheless, it must be said that Zundel LEGALLY married an American 
citizen several years ago, came to the U.S. LEGALLY, and promptly 
secured a U.S. attorney to handle his immigration processing. 
The enclosed press release from the Zundel family and his legal 
counsel provides further detail.  

If suppression of Mr. Zundel's freedom of speech is NOT the U.S. 
government's motive for summarily arresting him without a warrant 
and without notice,  summarily imprisoning Zundel without bail, and 
then summarily deporting him to Canada WITHOUT first allowing the 
would-be deportee the ordinary, constitutional appeals process, what, 
then, IS the motive of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization 
Service? 

Clearly, the I.N.S.'s violation of Ernst Zundel's 14th Amendment 
right to Equal Protection of the Laws (appeals, bail, warrants, 
notice, etc.) certainly seems to be motivated by a desire to restrict 
Mr. Zundel's FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION in the United States.  To that 
extent, free speech and civil liberties groups should be up in arms. 

Once again, the paradox and the hypocrisy could hardly be more 
obvious: why do ILLEGAL aliens from Mexico and elsewhere not receive 
this summary deportation treatment, yet a politically "incorrect," 
yet LEGAL immigrant from Canada is denied proper notice, bail, an 
arrest warrant, and much other due process, both substantive and 
procedural? 

Finally, regardless of how much you may disagree with Zundel's 
politics, surely you must agree that the "Equal Protection" clause of 
the 14th Amendment has been flagrantly violated by the U.S. 
Immigration and Naturalization Service in imposing this summary 
arrest and deportation. 

In case you still believe "THIS SORT OF THING CAN'T HAPPEN IN 
AMERICA," it can, and it is.  At least the Soviet Union was more or 
less an "honest" tyranny.  It did not pretend to be otherwise.  In 
the U.S. Zundel case, however, the total lack of warrants, notice, or 
ordinary due process bespeaks rather more a K.G.B. proceeding than a 
democratic government at work.

Is this what our American democracy has devolved into at the start of 
the 21st century?  Apparently so. One is thus driven to ponder...

Despite the many cautions on this point by our Founding Fathers, does 
not the Zundel case prompt us to reflect on whether we have now 
become a nation of men, not of laws? 

Dissident writer John Peter Zenger in Pennsylvania publishes 
scathing criticisms of King George.  King George's 
government imprisons him.  Dissident writer Ernst Zundel publishes 
scathing criticisms of President George.  President George's 
government imprisons him.  Has anything really changed?   

Indeed, when a national government capriciously suspends or applies 
its own laws and constitutional rights AS, and WHEN, it sees fit, is 
that government any longer a truly "legitimate" government? 

We all know what Washington, Jefferson and Franklin said on this 
question back in 1776. 

Regards,

Lincoln Herbert

P.S. Perhaps civil liberties groups interested in freedom of speech 
and freedom of conscience (like the JOHN PETER ZENGER LAW SOCIETY in 
PHILADELPHIA) will want to inform their member-attorneys of the 
Zundel case.  Such groups may even wish to offer some assistance, 
either in the form of legal help, or simply via writing 
formal letters of complaint to the appropriate U.S. and Canadian 
officials involved in the Zundel case.  Zundel's attorney, Mr. 
Venable, should be able to provide such contact information.  FOR 
ANYONE WITH FURTHER QUESTIONS, THE E-MAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE 
NUMBER OF ZUNDEL'S ATTORNEY APPEARS AT THE END OF THE ENCLOSED PRESS 
RELEASE. 

=====

Press Release -                    May 15, 2003

DEPORTATION OF ZUNDEL FROM U.S. CALLED ILLEGAL

PRIVATE

	SEVIERVILLE, TENNESSEE (May 7, 2003) -- The United States 
acted illegally to deport Ernst Zundel from his home in Tennessee, 
and his case represents an abuse of executive power and will be fully 
pursued in the federal courts, says his U.S. legal team. 

	Zundel is a widely-known controversial figure who was 
prosecuted in Canada for "spreading false news" and whose conviction 
was ultimately overturned by that country's Supreme Court in 1992. 
He is now back in Canada, in prison and facing imminent deportation 
to Germany as a result of his deportation from the United States in 
February. 

	Canadian government officials on May 1 certified that he 
poses a threat to Canada's national security, but his lead attorney 
in the United States, Boyd W. Venable III, says that Zundel should 
have never been taken to Canada to begin with.

	"Zundel had been living with his wife peaceably in Tennessee 
for almost three years, awaiting immigration processing," says 
Venable.  "He posed a threat to no one.  An FBI agent had even told 
him his speech was protected in the U.S."

	Venable says that in order to try to justify Zundel's 
deportation the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service had to 
have either "lost" or destroyed or disregarded two separate letters 
that Zundel's immigration attorney wrote to INS, while Zundel was 
waiting for an interview on the petition filed for him by his wife, 
United States citizen Ingrid Rimland Zundel.   One of these letters 
was sent U.S. "certified mail" and its receipt by INS was 
acknowledged in writing.  INS says it has no record of the letters 
and that Zundel "abandoned" his immigration case by not appearing for 
an interview, but Venable says Zundel's immigration attorney took 
routine measures to have the interview rescheduled.  

	"It is hard to see this as another case of INS bungling," 
says Venable.  Venable says that immigration law experts who he has 
consulted with say that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that 
Zundel was targeted for his political views--"they are telling me 
essentially that his immigration arrest was contrived and that the 
case sets off alarm bells of national dimensions, particularly in 
view of other acts being taken in the name of national security." 

	While the Canadian media have reported that Zundel was 
removed from the U.S. because he "missed a hearing" or that his 
"visa" had expired or that he overstayed his permitted stay, none of 
those accounts are correct, says Venable.  Until the day of his 
arrest Zundel was recognized as lawfully present in the U.S. since he 
was waiting for a duly-rescheduled interview for permanent residence, 
based on his marriage. 

	Moreover, Zundel never needed a visa to enter the U.S. or 
remain there, says Venable, since he had been originally admitted to 
the U.S. on a "visa waiver" program applicable to German citizens, 
and then in May 2000 had been waved through a border crossing at 
Niagara Falls like an ordinary visa-exempt Canadian, and had never 
left because of his marriage. 

	That is part of the story detailed in an appellate brief 
filed by Venable with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 
mid-April.  No deadline has been sent for the response of the United 
States government.  Venable says he received direct and indirect 
assistance in the federal appeal from experienced immigration 
litigators. 

	Venable says he remains shocked at what happened in February 
to Zundel, who lived nearby.  "With no warning whatsoever, five INS 
agents and local authorities appeared at Zundel's home, arrested him 
without a warrant, did not allow him to go back into the house, did 
not allow him to call a lawyer, and he was deported to Canada less 
than two weeks later.  I didn't believe this was possible in the 
United States and I still can't believe it."  

	Although he filed an emergency request for a Writ of Habeas 
Corpus in federal court in Knoxville, Venable says the court 
dismissed the case with a terse explanation that there were no 
grounds for reviewing the INS action.  Venable says that decision is 
clearly incorrect, especially since there was nothing in the federal 
court's file to show the judge why Zundel was being deported without 
a hearing.  The appeal to the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati is based on 
that erroneous decision, he says.  

	Zundel's wife Ingrid (Rimland) as a child experienced 
firsthand the battlegrounds of World War II in Russia and later 
Germany.  Her father was taken away by the Russian secret police and 
she never saw him again.  She fled with her family and others in her 
Mennonite community to Germany and later to South America. 

	"Am I going to lose my husband for life--because he holds 
politically incorrect opinions?  Because he speaks and writes as his 
conscience dictates?" she asks.

	Rimland says her husband is a pacifist and a gentle man who 
is trying to address the hate that has been directed at Germans since 
World War II.  "Can a brutal agency simply snatch my husband away 
from me without an explanation?  Is this still America?  Is the U.S. 
Constitution still in force?  Is the Bill of Rights still in 
operation--or is it merely a platitude?  Am I back in a dictatorship 
the likes of which I had tried to outrun as a child?"

	Venable says that he and his legal team are trying to 
interest the American Civil Liberties Union and other academics and 
civil libertarians in the case.  To date no one has stepped forward 
to assist--perhaps because Zundel is such a reviled figure, he says. 
Several national Jewish groups have labeled Zundel as a "Holocaust 
denier" for his views on events of World War II, which include the 
view that practically all of the Jews who died in concentration camps 
died from illness and, toward the end of the war, from 
starvation--not from gassing.  Crematoria were used to dispose of 
diseased corpses for public health reasons, according to Zundel.   

	Zundel has written that powerful Jewish groups have fostered 
the propaganda of mass gassings and sought to repress contrary 
evidence in order to serve their own post-war interests.  
       
	"In a free nation someone has to speak up for even the person 
who has the most unpopular or politically incorrect views," states 
Venable.  "Zundel is not advocating violence.  Regardless of whether 
you agree or disagree with Zundel's views, he is supposed to have the 
right to express himself without armed officers coming to his door to 
take him away.  We hope the Sixth Circuit will agree."

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