Press release: ZUNDEL CHALLENGES JUDGES IN BID FOR REHEARING

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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ZUNDEL CHALLENGES JUDGES IN BID FOR REHEARING

  Cincinnati, Ohio--Two of three judges who denied his federal court 
appeal should voluntarily disqualify themselves because of improper 
associations with his federal government adversary, maverick 
publisher Ernst Zundel says in a petition filed April 12 with the 
U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati seeking a rehearing on his United 
States habeas corpus case. The court denied his bid for a habeas 
corpus fact-finding hearing in February 2007.

  Zundel, a German national married to a United States citizen but 
currently jailed in Germany, is asking for either a rehearing by a 
new three-judge panel because of bias, or a rehearing en banc by a 
larger group of judges because of the critical constitutional issues 
his case raises, says his California attorney, Bruce Leichty.

  In his request for rehearing Zundel asserts that the three-judge 
panel which denied his appeal failed to address his argument that his 
habeas rights had been unconstitutionally suspended, and failed to 
address the implications of "converting" his appeal into a petition 
for review under the REAL ID Act of 2006.

  Under the REAL ID Act, immigrants hit with a deportation order are 
allowed only "one bite at the apple" consisting of a request to a 
federal appeals court for review of legal issues, notes Leichty. "The 
impatience of Congress with seemingly interminable federal court 
review of deportation orders was understandable at the time the REAL 
ID Act was passed in 2006," notes Leichty, "but the REAL ID Act also 
assumed that immigrants hit with deportation orders already had had 
administrative hearings and due process in front of an immigration 
judge. That never happened in Ernst Zundel's case."

  Leichty says among its errors, the Cincinnati appeals court assigned 
an illegal immigrant status to Zundel that he did not have, 
overlooked the expiration in May 2000 of a congressional program 
which prevented German visitors from asserting their rights, and also 
failed to address the fact that Zundel in October 2000 had been given 
work authorization and the right to travel and return to the United 
States, after his wife, Ingrid Rimland Zundel, petitioned for his 
permanent residence as her spouse. The court further ignored the fact 
that INS had a policy of not deporting immigrants awaiting permanent 
residence through a U.S. citizen spouse petition, according to 
Leichty.

  The Zundels were living in Tennessee and awaiting an immigration 
interview in 2003 when federal agents arrested him without a warrant, 
just a few months after the FBI had found that Zundel's conduct was 
protected under U.S. law and that he would likely obtain permanent 
residence. Upon his arrest Ernst Zundel promptly filed a petition for 
habeas corpus, but a federal judge in Knoxville twice disavowed any 
jurisdiction, and Zundel was whisked across the Canadian border while 
his appeal was still pending; the appeals court has now refused to 
require a hearing despite precedents requiring such hearings for 
deported immigrants when they are barred from reentering the United 
States, says Leichty.

  Zundel discovered after his arrest that two letters sent by his 
Tennessee attorney to INS about rescheduling his permanent residence 
interview were missing from the INS file. The arresting authorities 
used the pretext of a "missed hearing" when they arrested Zundel, 
says Leichty.

  "Here is a man who never had his day in any sort of court before 
being carted out of this country to face indefinite imprisonment in 
Canada and Germany under laws that Americans have historically 
rejected," says Leichty.

  Zundel spent two years in solitary confinement in Canada while the 
Canadian Interior Ministry attempted to prove, through use of secret 
evidence, that he was a national security risk to that country, and 
he was then convicted in Germany in February 2007 of a speech crime 
after Canada deported him. He is currently sentenced to serve a 
five-year prison term in Germany, but plans to appeal that sentence.

  Leichty states that because of the label of "Holocaust denier" 
attached to Zundel and the stigma associated with it, it has been 
difficult or impossible for Zundel to get a fair trial in any of the 
countries where he has been imprisoned. In Germany Zundel was not 
allowed to present evidence to rebut the government's contention 
regarding "the Holocaust," although the exact meaning of that term 
and the limits of acceptable discourse regarding the events of World 
War II remained ambiguous, says Leichty.

  The judge presiding at Zundel's "security certificate" trial in 
Canada was a former advisor to the Canadian national intelligence 
service, which provided the secret evidence used to convict Zundel 
there--although the Canadian Supreme Court has since found that the 
use of secret evidence in such proceedings is unconstitutional.

The judge presiding at Zundel's trial in Knoxville found that he had 
written "anti-semitic" materials, a finding repeated by the 
Cincinnati appeals court in the first sentence of its February 2007 
opinion, despite the fact that Zundel has always disclaimed 
anti-semitic views and despite the fact that Zundel's political 
opinions should have been irrelevant for the purposes of immigration 
issues, says Leichty.

  "And now Zundel has been victimized yet again by federal appeals 
court judges who should have disqualified themselves from hearing his 
case because of partisanship," claims Leichty. One of the judges, 
Clinton appointee Martha Daughtrey, has a daughter working as an 
Assistant United States Attorney in Tennessee under Attorney General 
Alberto Gonzales, the respondent named in Zundel's case and also the 
officer heading the department litigating Zundel's habeas corpus 
claim.

  The presiding judge in Zundel's U.S. appeal, a 2003 Bush appointee 
named Deborah Cook, was forced to issue a public apology in January 
2007 for having tried to make a prohibited campaign contribution to 
the then-senior Republican Senator from Ohio, Michael DeWine, who was 
engaged in 2006 in a fierce reelection battle with his Democratic 
challenger. Investigative journalists at www.Muckraker.org first 
uncovered the prohibited contribution and said that Cook initially 
tried to blame it on her lawyer husband before finally conceding that 
she didn't know such contributions were prohibited, because she 
missed "judge's school." President George Bush twice flew to 
Cincinnati to appear at fund-raisers for DeWine, one of which was 
held at the home of the brother of another Ohio federal judge.

  Documentation of all those facts has been presented to the Court of 
Appeals in Cincinnati as part of Zundel's petition for rehearing, 
says Leichty, who notes that he didn't discover the judges' 
associations until after both judges showed their predisposition at 
oral argument in January 2007.

"Clearly when Judge Cook made that campaign contribution to a Bush 
crony she showed a total lack of understanding of the fact that she 
was obliged to leave partisan politics behind her when she was 
appointed to the federal bench," adds Leichty. "How then can a 
controversial political dissident deported by the Bush administration 
have any confidence in that judge?"

  Leichty notes that in early April he visited with Zundel at the 
prison in Mannheim, Germany where he is confined. Despite appeals to 
international law, German judicial authorities refused to allow the 
two to talk confidentially, placing an "interpreter" in the room 
despite the fact that English has always been the language that 
Leichty and Zundel communicate in.

  "Ernst's spirit is unbroken and he believes he will be vindicated by 
history in all three of the countries where he has been persecuted," 
says Leichty. "My immediate hope is that he will also be vindicated 
by the judicial system in at least the one country which still claims 
to protect free speech and habeas corpus and due process."

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