ZGram - March 11, 2004 - "Counterpunch: Star Chamber Redux"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever

March 11, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I remember the times back in 1996 when the Nizkor Jews howled that 
Ernst Zundel, who refused to join their news group sewer called 
alt.revisionism, could not command enough supporters "to fill a 
telephone booth." 

These days, still held in brutal conditions in a Canadian hell-hole 
called Toronto Metro West Detention Center, Ernst's story and 
struggle are solidly featured not only in alternative publications 
all over the globe, but are beginning to make inroads where his 
Jewish foes never expected Ernst Zundel to be:  In socially 
responsible liberal publications - for instance, Counterpunch, 
described as "America's best political newsletter."

The article below has been in the making for some time.  I had some 
input in keeping the facts and chronology straight and supplying some 
of the quotes.  So far, it appeared only in the Counterpunch print 
version, and I don't know if it will be featured on the Counterpunch 
website as well. 

This is one of the fairest articles so far describing what really 
happened in the illegal political kidnapping, and I'd like my readers 
to write to Alexander Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair, editors of 
Counterpunch, and thank them.  You might consider subscribing to 
their publication. 

Their e-mail is counterpunch at counterpunch.org 

Thank you!

Here is that article:

[START]

Star Chamber Redux
Alan Cabal

In a cold cell in Toronto, Canada, a 64 year-old painter and pacifist 
sits on a fat stack of trial transcripts and marks his 365th day of 
solitary confinement on February 19. He sits on the transcripts 
because his jailers will not permit him to have a chair. He has no 
criminal record and has not been charged with a crime, and yet he 
wears the same orange jumpsuit as the murderers and rapists housed 
elsewhere in the prison. He is not permitted to confront or 
cross-examine his accusers in court. The "evidence" against him 
includes hearsay, double-hearsay, and triple-hearsay.

The object of the exercise is to deport this man to Germany, where he 
faces a five-year prison sentence for the crime of "defaming the 
dead." This man hasn't lived in Germany since he was 19 years old, 
and hasn't set foot in Germany for years. He emigrated to Canada in 
1958, and in the year 2000 he moved to the United States to live 
quietly with his American wife in the rolling hills of Tennessee. 
There, he painted landscapes and still life in his studio and 
collected rare recordings of hymns and gospel music until he was 
hauled off one bright morning in broad daylight at about 11:00 a.m. 
in front of God and everybody and whisked to Canada by American law 
enforcement officials. His name is Ernst Zundel, and he is the 
world's premier thought-criminal.

Ernst Zundel is the most widely recognized figure in the growing 
number of historians, both amateur and academic, questioning the 
veracity of orthodox accounts of the events which took place in the 
Nazi concentration camps during World War II, specifically with 
reference to the number of Jewish dead and the means by which they 
came to their demise. He has been put through the Canadian legal 
system before on this issue. In 1984 he was charged with "spreading 
false news" under an obscure 700 year-old law imported to Canada from 
England intended to deter wandering minstrels from mocking the 
aristocracy. It had been used only twice before in Canada. That trial 
was focused on a publication, "Did Six Million Really Die?" Zundel 
didn't write it, he merely published it, but that was enough to 
arouse the ire of the Jewish Lobby. That trial was in 1985 and lasted 
seven weeks. He lost that trial, but the verdict was overturned on 
appeal when it was determined that the judge was biased.

The second trial was on the same charges, but this time Ernst 
commissioned the forensic examination known as the Leuchter Report, 
which alleged that the industrial gassings of human beings so crucial 
to the orthodox narrative could not have happened. He lost that trial 
as well, but was exonerated in 1992 when Canada's Supreme Court ruled 
the "False News Law" unconstitutional and struck it from the books. 
This 4-3 ruling held that minorities have the right to state their 
own opinions, "even if the majority regards them as wrong or false."

In 1996 the Canadian Human Rights Commission initiated a "Human 
Rights Tribunal" against him which dragged on for five years. This 
trial centered on the "Zundelsite" (www.zundelsite.org), a website 
based in America and owned and operated by Ingrid Rimland, an 
American citizen.

"Ernst was believed to be the mastermind who controlled me," she 
explains. "This trial's purpose was twofold: one, to bankrupt Ernst 
financially by stringing out the hearings, and two, to force him to 
shut down the website. Knowing he wouldn't and couldn't do that, the 
plan was to charge and imprison him with contempt of court --- in 
other words, criminalization by the back door to facilitate 
deportation to Germany.

"I flew from San Diego to Toronto in 1996 and offered on the very 
first day when court opened to testify that it was my website, but 
was not allowed to do so. We were not married then. Ernst lost that 
trial as well. One of the many bizarre rulings of that trial was that 
'truth is not a defense' --- only the feelings of an aggrieved and 
threatened 'minority' count. The Tribunal ruled in 2001 against 
Ernst, but stated in its summary that it was a 'symbolic' ruling, 
since the Zundelsite was an American website and could not be shut 
down by Canada."

  He has been physically assaulted in numerous ways on numerous 
occasions by thugs of various persuasions. These assaults included 
beatings, booby-trapped mailings, a bomb that exploded in his garage 
in 1984, another bomb sent through the post 11 years later, and an 
arson attack which destroyed his home and its contents. He has never 
been convicted of a crime and in no way does he promote violence or 
hatred of any kind in his work. His only "crime" is that of 
questioning historical events.

He was arrested at his home in rural Tennessee by local authorities 
last year and handed over to the INS, ostensibly for missing an 
interview with immigration officials and "overstaying his visa." In 
fact, no such violation occurred. He was notified of an interview 
scheduled for June 12, 2001. His attorney at that time couldn't make 
the interview and requested a rescheduling, a routine request, 
routinely granted. He received no reply. The attorney sent another 
letter again requesting a rescheduling on May 6, 2002. Again there 
was no reply. Zundel's American wife, Ingrid Rimland, has the return 
receipt verifying that the letter was, in fact, delivered to the INS. 
The agency claims to have no record of either letter.

The couple never abandoned Ernst's Adjustment Of Status application, 
nor were they ever informed that it had been considered abandoned. 
They had been advised by INS that the procedure could take as long as 
three years, and that no status check would be allowed.

"When Ernst was arrested," Ms. Rimland explains, "we were prevented 
from calling a lawyer. A Warrant for Deportation lay ready in 
Knoxville and was signed and dated after the arrest. In the room 
where this was done, a poster with the Star of Israel was posted 
prominently on the wall.

"Through the Freedom of Information Act --- some 30 pages withheld 
for 'security reasons' --- we found out that some coded messages had 
been faxed on the very day of our first scheduled appointment between 
US Immigration and Canadian Immigration. Who in Canada was interested 
in causing us grief that day? A good place to start would be to check 
into some non-profit outfits that are fattening themselves on the 
taxpayers' trough by shrieking 'Hate!' for gain.

"After Ernst was arrested, we immediately applied for habeas corpus. 
We were turned down by a judge within hours in a one-sentence ruling. 
Not even our attorney was allowed to speak up. We appealed to the 
Sixth Circuit Appeal Court. Within days we were turned down again, 
this time in a one-paragraph ruling. Through FOIA we found out that 
there was ex parte communication prior to this ruling between a clerk 
who has a Jewish-sounding name and an immigration official who was 
exceedingly nasty to me when I tried to find out where my husband had 
been taken, and why. I understand it is illegal for court officials 
to solicit information on a pending court case behind the judge's and 
the accused's backs."

On June 17, 2003, accompanied by two INS officers, Ernst Zundel was 
deported to Canada by plane.

"On that very day," states Ms. Rimland, "Germany swore out an arrest 
warrant. Why on that day? Who notified them, and on what grounds? An 
impartial judge could surely find out by requesting the missing FOIA 
pages.

"Through various documents and private sources, some at the highest 
levels of Germany's government, we learned that the original covert 
plan had been to get Ernst shipped to Germany, where 'insulting the 
memory of the dead' is on the books as a criminal offense, and where 
a 5 year sentence is a foregone conclusion for so-called 'Holocaust 
Denial.' Whoever masterminded this kidnapping evidently didn't know 
that the US always deports back to the country of entry, not to the 
country of nationality. Ernst ended up in Canada, and Canadian 
taxpayers are now stuck with the bill."

Ernst applied for political asylum on the grounds that it was a 
certainty that he was facing a prison term in Germany for his 
historical inquiries and theories. In 1992, after numerous appeals 
following the "Second Great Holocaust Trial", as it came to be known 
in revisionist circles, the highest court in Canada had ruled that 
Mr. Zundel had the right to speak his mind and express his views as 
he saw fit, "Ševen if the majority regards them as wrong or false," 
as the court phrased it.

His adversaries came up with a solution. Two Ministers of the 
Canadian Parliament decided that Zundel might be a "terrorist." A 
"Security Certificate" was sworn out. This instrument is the only 
method by which Ernst could be deported to Germany, as he would 
otherwise be fully qualified for asylum in Canada, where he lived as 
a law-abiding permanent resident for 42 years. The quality of the 
evidence presented against him often goes like this:

"Mr. Zundel allegedly had 'sporadic contacts' with a now-dead U.S. 
based white supremacist named William Pierce. Pierce wrote a book 
called 'The Turner Diaries.' Timothy McVeigh loved 'The Turner 
Diaries', which supposedly describes a bombing similar to the 
Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, for which McVeigh was convicted."

Note that the date, time, place, and nature of these "contacts" 
between Zundel and Pierce go unspecified, nor is there any suggestion 
that Zundel had anything to do with the authorship of the infamous 
Turner Diaries. There is no assertion or evidence that Zundel had any 
contact with McVeigh. It's all innuendo intended to link Zundel to 
violence and terrorism.

Here's a pertinent excerpt from a Factum filed with the Court of 
Appeal for Ontario on January 21 by Mr. Zundel's legal counsel, Peter 
Lindsay and Chi-Kun Shi:

"Information and/or evidence has been secretly presented to Mr. 
Justice Blais in the absence of Mr. Zundel and his counsel, which 
information and/or evidence may be used according to the Act to 
determine both whether Mr. Zundel should continue to be detained and 
whether the issuing of the Certificate was reasonable. Where secret 
information and/or evidence has been presented to Mr. Justice Blais, 
sometimes a summary has been given to Mr. Zundel and his counsel and 
sometimes no summary of the information and/or evidence has been made 
available to Mr. Zundel and his counsel, even though the information 
and/or evidence may be used according to the Act both to determine 
whether Mr. Zundel should continue to be detained and whether the 
issue of the Certificate is reasonable.

"It is a fundamental principle of our adversarial system that one 
party presents its case fully and then the other party responds, 
knowing the case it has to meet. What has happened in this case is 
that after the Minister and Solicitor General presented their case 
and while Mr. Zundel was in the middle of presenting his response, 
the Minister and Solicitor General have secretly presented more of a 
case against Mr. Zundel. The additional case being presented is not 
limited to reply evidence. It is not limited at all. The case can 
secretly change in any way while being responded to. Mr. Zundel and 
his counsel do not know if it has changed in this case. Neither does 
this Honorable Court. It is not an overstatement to say that this is 
completely contrary to the fundamental principles of our judicial 
system"

No other historical narrative is possessed of an orthodoxy protected 
by law. It is in the nature of history to be subject to review and 
revision. The surest way to interest people in a field of inquiry or 
study is to prohibit it. The "Holocaust Industry", as Norman 
Finkelstein dubbed it, behaves in every way like a fanatical cult. 
The persecution of Ernst Zundel has been and continues to be both 
relentless and utterly ruthless. This most recent and ongoing episode 
flies in the face of a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon law. The man may 
hold provocative views, but he is a committed pacifist. He is guilty 
only of expressing an unpopular viewpoint. For him to be held in 
solitary confinement without having even been charged with a crime 
and without bail for a year while the court proceeds against him in 
some hideous replica of a Star Chamber or something out of Lewis 
Carroll is an affront to justice and public decency that goes far 
beyond anything that Mr. Zundel has to say.


[END]

=====

Reminder: 

Help free Ernst Zundel, Prisoner of Conscience.  His prison sketches 
- now on-line and highly popular - help pay for his defence.  Take a 
look - and tell a friend.

http://www.zundelsite.org/gallery/donations/index.html