Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday, March 6, 2004 - Page A22

Ernst Zündel, victim of the mordern day Caiphas (Ir-win Cotler) for exposing the fake religion of the so-called holocaust.

Zündel doesn't warrant a security certificate

Editorial

Ernst Zündel has been in a Canadian jail for more than a year. Seized at his Tennessee home by U.S. immigration agents and delivered here, he is facing deportation to Germany on claims that he is a danger to Canadian citizens. In the meantime, he languishes in a tiny cell at Toronto's Metro West Detention Centre in solitary confinement.

Tough luck, many will say. Mr. Zündel is depressingly well known to Canadians as a Holocaust-denier and extreme right-winger who spent decades here spreading his noxious opinions about Jews. We would all love to see the back of him. But is he dangerous? So dangerous, in fact, that we need to pen him up in an isolation cell for 12 months and counting?

The federal government is holding Mr. Zündel on a national security certificate, a special procedure that allows it to bypass many of the standard rules of due process to protect public safety. Those cases almost always involve suspected terrorists. If two cabinet ministers decide that an individual poses a risk, they can have him locked up indefinitely pending deportation. The suspect is not allowed to see the precise evidence against him, and his odds of overturning the order in court are slim. The government must show only that it acted "reasonably," a preposterously low legal hurdle.

These are extreme measures in a democratic society, and Ottawa should use them only if it believes a suspect is likely to do physical harm to people or property. Odious as he is, Mr. Zündel poses no such risk. He has never been charged with a violent crime and does not urge others to commit violence. He is a crank, not a terrorist.

It is hard to know exactly how Ottawa defends its decision to jail Mr. Zündel, because, under the security-certificate process, it can keep most of its evidence secret -- a provision that severely limits Mr. Zündel's right to mount a defence. But a summary compiled by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service argues that even if he doesn't actually advocate violence, he is dangerous because of the influence he exerts on his followers. "By his comportment as a leader and an ideologue, the service believes Zündel intends serious violence to be a consequence of his influence."

That, says Mr. Zündel, is guilt by association. He is right. It is precisely the sort of argument that was used to lock up leftists in the days of the Red Scare. You are a Communist and Communists advocate violent revolution; therefore you are conspiring to commit violence against the state. Guilty as charged.

If Mr. Zündel can be jailed and deported for his "comportment" as an "ideologue," then every Greenpeacer and anti-abortion activist must fear imprisonment. Their rhetoric is pretty wild, too. Perhaps the anti-poverty campaigner with a nose-ring handing out pamphlets at the mall also "intends serious violence to be a consequence of his influence." Now that CSIS has the power to read minds, who knows where it may stop?

The real danger to Canadians comes not from obnoxious nuts like Ernst Zündel, but from a government that casually discards their most precious rights.

Now, lodged in an isolation cell at the Metro West Detention Centre, he rarely sees anyone. He takes medication for a heart condition, bad circulation and serious dental problems, and is allowed just 10 minutes of exercise a day. His tiny cell has a cot, toilet and sink, but no toothbrush or towels. If he wants to write, he must perch on a stack of transcripts and use his sink as a desk.
"I do not speak for weeks sometimes," he says. "This is why my voice tends to give way in the courtroom. I'm not bitching, but this is Canada -- it's not Turkistan. I do think somebody is inflicting pain on me."
Mr. Zundel contends that he was turfed out of the United States because of a clandestine request from Canadian authorities, and that U.S. immigration authorities used as a their pretext a minor omission he had made in his paperwork, something that rarely cause a newcomer such grief.

Globe and Mail, Toronto, March 6, 2004