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May 11, 2003
Press Release
DEPORTATION OF ZUNDEL FROM U.S. CALLED ILLEGAL
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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