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 the
phone 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.
- The majority of times, 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 at all
times 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,
nevertheless, 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 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 about The previous examination
dated, August 5, 2002, is used for
comparison.
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 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
victim, in this case me, Ernst Zündel
and my 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 laying 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 aw 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,
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 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
dissidence 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, which 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 the 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 the amounts, a mere
pittance paid by that state to a person
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
mind set 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, - Ernst Zündel,
Prisoner of Conscience
- Cell #5, Maximum Security Area
- Toronto West Detention Center
- 111 Disco Rd, Box 4950
-
Ernst
Zündel held in Batavia, N.Y.,
detention center
-
Wife
fears key could soon be thrown
away
-
Zündel
headed back to Canada
-
Ingrid Rimland reports: Arrest
of Ernst Zündel by US: Is held in
Jail
-
Renowned
Neo-Nazi activist held in Blount County
jail
-
Feb
2001: Ernst Zuendel has emigrated from
Canada to the United States
-
Outrage
of Canadian Jewish leader Ernst
Zündel back on Canadian
soil
-
Ernst
Zündel held in Batavia, N.Y.,
detention center
-
Holocaust
denier wants refugee status, group
says
-
Zündel
seeking refugee status
-
Zündel
seeks refugee status in Canada
(CTV)
-
Outrage
of B'nai Brith: 'Now he's our
problem"
-
May 2, 2003: Ernst
Zündel arrested again in Canadian
prison cell: Ottawa files a
security certificate declaring him a
"national security risk" to enable them
to deport him to Germany
-
Victoria (BC) Times-Colonist:
"Even
Zündel merits fairness"
-
Bill
Dunphy's tortured defence of "Nazi
apologist" Zündel
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