ZGram - 9/8/2003 - "ZGram - 9/8/2003 - "Ingrid's Refusenik Ad,
American Version"
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Tue Sep 9 04:05:59 EDT 2003
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
September 9, 2003
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Once more the Zundel Saga has made history! Important history!
Let me briefly explain:
As you know, some weeks ago I placed a full page ad in the Washington
Times, calling attention to Ernst Zundel as America's best-known
Refusenik and asking President Putin to grant him asylum and a
passport. Many people were elated about this ad, thinking it a
clever and inventive idea, but a few grumblers thought that I was
wasting supporter money that could have been better used in other
ways.
I'd like to ask: How? I am already employing a legal time of five
attorneys, soon to be seven, not even counting several lawyers on
volunteer standby in countries other than Canada and the the US. I
have spent more than $60,000 on attorneys' fees alone, all of it
financed by volunteer donations in exchange for simple "Refusenik
Sketches" Ernst draws with primitive children's crayons to help me
from his cell. Fence-sitters dispensing good advice but little else
are not helpful to us! We HAVE to be inventive and novel in our
approaches - and we are! And there's more in the hopper, believe me!
This first ad of mine produced only silence out of the Putin
Quarters, but let's just assume that little birds whisper in our ears
that it produced lots and lots of diplomatic attention in Washington
Embassy Quarters we could never have otherwise penetrated with a
mundane public relations outreach. Also, it brought us new
supporters and lots and lots of write-ups, translations and
commentaries on websites and in print media all over the world. This
first ad more than paid for itself!
I thought I should try it again - this time not only in the
Washington Times but also in several important foreign publications.
To make a long story short, through anonymous leads I connected with
Zavtra, a Russian paper I have been told is being read by every
politician in the former Soviet Union, now a democracy. To my
amazement, not only was my ad immediately accepted and even
translated without charge to me, it ran UNEDITED, full page, replete
with my favorite Zundel cartoon, www.zundelsite.org, a few days ago!
Not so in the Washington Times, an important mainstream publication
in America. After much back-and-forth, a HEAVILY CENSORED, much
truncated version ran on September 7, two days ago!
Is this not a story that speaks volumes?! Where's freedom now in our
world? In the former Soviet Union, you can call a spade a spade and
name your tormentors. In Washington, DC., the media lets itself be
gagged, even if you pay for what you need to say!
For the record and our website archives, I am running both versions,
the American edited version today, and the Russian unedited version
in tomorrow's ZGram. As before, I urge all of you who have either
access to popular websites or access to print paper, to spread the
text of one or both ads as far and wide as you can!
Here comes the American media version:
START:
Open Letter to the Senate and Congress of the United States of America
This is an intensely personal story.
When I was very young, I knew life at the mercy of four dictators -
Stalin, Hitler, Peron and Stroessner. When I came to America in
1967, I thought that I had entered paradise where there was justice,
law and order. I willingly and proudly became a US citizen in 1973.
Fast forward to 2003. Now of retirement age, I was happily married
for more than three years to a kind, gentle man with politically
incorrect views - until, in broad daylight on American soil, my
husband was brutally kidnapped by agents of my government!
Ernst Zündel, a German national, was not arrested and deported
because he "overstayed his visa", as the arresting officials falsely
claimed. A compelling paper trail proves that my husband was
deported and imprisoned because he is a high-profile activist best
known for holding politically incorrect views on the Holocaust.
Because of his dogged insistence on questioning unverified Holocaust
claims, Ernst Zündel has made powerful political enemies in several
Western countries. Repeatedly, he has been targeted for
assassination -- twice by parcel bomb, once by arson, and once by a
young woman posing as a foreign journalist who was stealthily
deported.
Follow what happened recently:
ERNST ZUNDEL - PRISON MEMOIRS, FEBRUARY 5 - FEBRUARY 19, 2003
I lived for more than 40 years in Canada. After my marriage to
Ingrid, I had applied for Adjustment of Status so I could live with
her in Tennessee. My application had been accepted. I had been
fingerprinted, given a work permit, a social security number, a
medical. I was waiting for an interview with Immigration officials
which I understood to be the last step before being granted permanent
resident status. Since our first interview had to be canceled due to
a time schedule conflict, our attorney had requested a new date. We
have in our possession the original return receipt that our request
to be re-scheduled had been received by INS.
We waited for that interview in the belief that we had done
everything we knew how to do, by the book. We had purchased an art
gallery and planned to open it in weeks. One of my handymen was
helping me frame some of my water colors, oils and line drawings
which I intended to hang that very afternoon. All this came to an
abrupt end when a virtual posse of police cruisers and paddy wagons
materialized in my driveway in Tennessee at about 11:00 a.m.,
February 5, 2003.
I was dressed in my work outfit, blue jeans, mountain hiking boots,
colorful carpenter's suspenders and casual flannel shirt. I inquired
what brought them there as they surrounded me menacingly. They told
me to put my hands on the hood of a truck in the driveway and said
that they were Immigration Service Enforcement Officers who had come
to take me into custody because I had failed to keep a hearing date.
There was no "hearing" date. We were waiting for an interview we
thought was going to be rescheduled. I was stunned - as was Ingrid.
The five officers had no arrest warrant. I asked to call my attorney.
The request was denied. Ingrid, too, was told no calls to our
attorney were allowed. I asked Ingrid to get my jacket, passport and
medication, since I was not allowed to go back into the house.
Ingrid was later told that this was deemed to have been a "civil"
arrest. There was nothing "civil" about this arrest!
Within minutes, I was in handcuffs and leg irons in a prison van,
escorted in a police convoy down our mountain road, past our art
gallery, into our little town where Ingrid and I did our shopping,
and onto highway I-40 to the Knoxville Immigration Office, where I
was processed, finger printed, and photographed. A Polaroid photo
was taken of me against the wall of some garage. This photo was then
trimmed and later on stapled onto a document. The photo clearly shows
the outfit I wore the moment I was arrested.
I was given some documents to sign, which were lying on the desk of
one of the bureaucrats when I came in. They had yellow post-it notes,
and one clearly said in someone's handwriting, "Add today's date
here". One Immigration officer, not directly involved in my case,
had his wall decorated with a 2 x 4-foot large Israeli flag. Needless
to say, I found this somewhat of an odd wall decoration in a U.S.
Immigration Office!
I was then put again into a prison van in handcuffs and leg irons and
driven for approximately 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours through heavy traffic
from Knoxville via Maryville past the airport to a nearby jail, a
cold, unfriendly place. The processing there took over four hours. I
was kept in an ice-cold, all-concrete holding cell - even the seats
and floors were concrete - until well after midnight. The medication
I had brought with me to jail was disallowed. As a result, my blood
pressure began to act up. I was told by the nurses, to whom I was
taken - still in handcuffs and ankle irons -- that it was dangerously
high.
I was housed in a two-man cell, in 24-hour lockup, only allowed a
brief shower after two to three days and a short call to Ingrid -- I
don't remember when. My cell-mate was an engineer in chemistry, a
manic-depressive who hallucinated, talked to unseen people all day
and jumped up and down and out of bed all night long, hollering
orders, thinking he was in charge of the CIA and talking loudly to
"the President" on his make-believe telephone. He smelled awful,
obviously not having showered in weeks. He annoyed the guards
repeatedly in the middle of the night by using the in-cell intercom.
Finally, the guards came, six or seven of them, and told me to get
off my top bunk, grab my mattress and sheets and get out of the cell.
I stood in the hallway where I heard hollering, screaming, and
punching. I saw blood squirting against the wall as my crazy
cellmate was dragged on one leg across the floor into a different
area of the prison. I saw him a few days later. He was bruised, all
black and blue over his eyes and head as guards led him past me from
the doctor's office.
I was put into a two-man cell with a gentle, soft-spoken 65-year-old
barber who had tried to shoot his mother. He was kind and helpful to
me. I was now briefly with the general population, half Black,
Mexican and Indian, the rest being Whites, mainly from the Smoky
Mountain area. Most were hardened criminals, murderers, bank
robbers, car thieves. Almost all were repeat offenders. Many had 25
to 30-year sentences. There was anger, frustration and rage in that
place that was palpable.
Guards were unfriendly, cold, abrupt. One guard woke me up in the
middle of the night by poking me into the ribs with a flashlight
because I had left a book on the windowsill.
Come Sunday, I heard dogs barking. We were all ordered into our
cells while black-uniformed SWAT teams with dogs went systematically
from cell to cell, threw us on the floor face down, hand-cuffed, arms
twisted behind our backs. They dragged us outside the cells like
sacks of potatoes while helmeted, visored, New World Order-type cops
hollered commands at us. They searched our pockets, beds and plastic
bins. The dogs dripping saliva from their snapping jaws were mainly
Dobermans and German Shepherds and were kept on chain leashes two
feet away from our bodies and faces. Young, pretty women in
skin-tight uniforms and tightly-fitting flak jackets, all black in
color, kept climbing over the men who were curled up, face down,
shaking, frightened out of their wits. Some had tears streaming down
their faces. The women filmed these hapless prisoners with
mini-camcorders close up, laughing and joking, having themselves a
ball. Why were those videos taken?
I was there on two weekends, and this terrorizing of the prisoners
happened on both weekends. I was lucky to miss it the last weekend
because my American attorney, whom Ingrid had in the meantime
engaged, had come to see me and I was in the visitor meeting area of
the prison. He had found out by the grapevine that I was going to be
deported from the USA to Germany where I was born, even though I
lived in Canada since I was 19 years old and don't have a criminal
record either in Canada or the United States. He filed a habeas
corpus motion with the court, which was denied the same day, a
decision challenged by us the very next day in the Cincinnati Sixth
Circuit Court. By law, I should not have been taken out of that
prison and deported without having seen a judge - yet that is exactly
what happened a few night later!
I was awakened by pounding on my cell door at 2:30 a.m. and told to
get ready. By 4:30 a.m., the guards finally came to get me for
"processing out". I was given a shower, ice cold, and changed back
into my civilian clothing. It was a February 17, "President's Day".
Because of the holiday, they could not let me have the U.S. $400 I
had brought with me to prison. To this day, that money has not been
returned, nor was my expensive medication.
I was taken to the Knoxville Airport without a single cent in my
pocket. We boarded a plane to Atlanta, Georgia shortly after 7:00
a.m., landing there after 9:00 a.m. I was not told where we were
going, but I saw a sign at the airline counter: "Buffalo, New York".
Then, I realized they were shipping me to Canada, not to Germany.
I had had no opportunity to let Ingrid know where I was and what was
happening to me.
We arrived in Buffalo at 11:30 a.m. in a bad snowstorm. There I was
told I was banned from the U.S. for 20 years, which meant Ingrid
would be 87, and I would be 84 years old before I might see her again.
I was taken across the Canadian border, kept in a locked room at
Canadian Immigration offices at the Peace Bridge. There was lots of
gesticulation and loud talking. For reasons never explained, I was
taken back across the U.S. border, still in a snowstorm. We seemed
to slide and slither for hours until I finally spotted a sign saying
"Attica, New York, Maximum Security Prison". Luckily, the van turned
into Batavia and we finally arrived there at dusk, way out in a
wind-blown farming area. It was a flat-roofed facility, surrounded by
high barbed-wire fences and search lights with a small guard hut and
a barrier, reminiscent of the Dr. Zhivago film. A huge six-foot
guard, dressed in a Russian-type fur hat and a dark green greatcoat,
came to check papers and cargo, and soon I was processed into the
Batavia Detention Center. It was a seemingly new, very clean,
well-organized facility. Unfortunately, I was only there for not
quite two days before I was taken back to Canada, this time for good.
I was deported via the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie on February 19,
2003. I was interrogated for about seven or eight hours off and on.
I was allowed to call Ingrid, my lawyer and, within two hours, some
Scottish friends from Hamilton, Ontario. They came to bring me some
much-needed money.
I was "arrested" again - I thought I had already been arrested! - and
taken to Thorold, the Niagara Region Detention Center where, a few
weeks later, I was "arrested" for the third time when I was labeled,
by ministerial decree, a "security risk" for Canada - NOT for what I
had done in 42 years of responsibly and productively living in that
country, but for what someone else in the future "might" do by
reading what I had discovered about the murky business called the
"Holocaust".
=====
It has been six months since my husband was taken from me. Now
seriously ill, he is still being held in Toronto in 24-hour lock-up.
He has been viciously demonized by the Canadian media. He has been
totally ignored by the US government. He must defend himself against
"security risk" charges that could well lead to life-long
imprisonment, yet is not allowed a ball point pen, a pillow, or a
chair. After he was arrested, not a single law enforcement agency
has contacted me to explain, much less defend, what I can't help but
call a surreptitious extradition in the guise of "deportation" to
punish a principled man for his politically incorrect views.
Am I still living in America? If somebody smashes my window, I can
go to the police and complain -- and can expect that someone will
investigate. If somebody smashes my life, is there no recourse
because of the politically incorrect views my husband happens to
hold? I'd like to think that this is still America where dissident
views have a place, as long as they are put forth peacefully - as my
husband, a lifelong pacifist, has always responsibly done, and as the
record shows.
With this Open Letter, I am formally petitioning my government for a
an impartial congressional investigation. I ask that men of
principle and courage stand up to right this wrong. I am putting my
trust in "We the People" and ask that members of the US Congress and
Senate, elected to listen to our petitions, take concrete steps to
have my husband be returned to me - replete with politically
incorrect views.
Sincerely,
Ingrid Rimland Zündel, Ed.D.
Readers are asked to write for information and help defray
skyrocketing legal expenses.)
[END]
Tomorrow: Ingrid's Refusenik Ad, Russian Version.
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