TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Friday, February 16, 2007

Canada, which deported the defendant to Germany; and the United States, which deported the defendant to Canada, are both complicit in this violation of human rights.

From The Guardian [UK] Friday February 16, 2007:

"A German ... publisher was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews.

Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts.

The prosecutor, Andreas Grossmann, said Zündel's claim that the Holocaust never happened earned him the title of "political conman" and that his views were dangerous to Germans.

"You might as well argue that the sun rises in the west, but you cannot change that the Holocaust has been proven," he said, referring to Zündel's work Did Six Million Really Die? The prosecution accused him of using "pseudo-scientific methods" in an attempt to overturn the accepted facts on the Holocaust.

But campaigners for Zündel, 67, said he was a peaceful advocate of the right to free speech who was being denied that right. His supporters filled the courtroom.

At the close of the trial Zündel... asked the court in Mannheim to set up an international commission of historians to explore the Holocaust. He said he wanted "hard facts" and not just witness statements, and that if the commission could prove Jews were gassed he would "hold a press conference at which I would publicly apologise to Jews, Israelis and the world".[...]

Zündel, who emigrated to Canada in 1958 but was deemed a security threat by the time of his deportation in 2005, had repeated his claims in various publications and on his website.

[...]
Germany, which holds the six-month presidency of the EU, is trying to outlaw Holocaust denial and to ban swastikas across member countries. But the proposal is expected to cause heated debate over freedom of speech. Ten European countries and Israel already have laws against Holocaust denial.
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Labels: thoughtcrime

| Posted at 01:23 | PERMA-LINK |

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