- FRANKFURT (AP) - A German
judge ordered white supremacist Ernst Zundel held in jail after arraigning
him Wednesday on charges of denying the Holocaust and inciting hatred.
-
- Mr. Zundel, who was deported from Canada on Tuesday,
made no statement at the closed arraignment in the southwestern city of
Mannheim, court spokesman Ulrich Krehbiel said.
-
- German prosecutors accuse Mr. Zundel of decades of anti-Semitic
activities, including repeated denials of the Holocaust - a crime in Germany.
-
- Prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant for him in 2003.
Because Mr. Zundel's Holocaust-denying Web site is available in Germany,
he is considered to be spreading his message to Germans.
-
- Canadian authorities deported Mr. Zundel, 65, after a
federal judge ruled that his activities were a threat to national and international
security.
-
- Born in Germany in 1939, he emigrated to Canada in 1958
and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials rejected
his attempts to obtain citizenship in 1966 and 1994. He moved to Pigeon
Forge, Tenn., until he was deported to Canada in 2003 for immigration violations.
-
- Mr. Zundel has operated Samisdat Publishing, a leading
distributor of Nazi propaganda, since the 1970s. Over the past decade,
he has been a key content provider for a Web site dedicated to Holocaust
denial.
-
- Canadian authorities had held him in solitary confinement
since 2003 while determining whether they had grounds to deport him.
-
- Mr. Zundel has claimed he is a peaceful man with no criminal
record against him in Canada.
-
- Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human-rights group, said Tuesday that
Mr. Zundel's likely trial would help to educate younger generations in
Europe who are increasingly unaware of the horrors of the Holocaust.
-
- "Let's give him another 15 minutes of fame, if the
trial can expose how Holocaust denial comes about," Mr. Cooper said.
"To cast the light of history and truth, and to be done so in a German
court, is very important."
-
- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
|
