Xref: utzoo misc.legal:4785 soc.culture.jewish:5726 can.politics:1535 Path: utzoo!yunexus!spectrix!lsuc!dave From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) Newsgroups: misc.legal,soc.culture.jewish,can.politics Subject: Zundel found guilty for lies on Holocaust Message-ID: <1988May12.093956.13333@lsuc.uucp> Date: 12 May 88 13:39:51 GMT Article-I.D.: lsuc.1988May12.093956.13333 Posted: Thu May 12 09:39:51 1988 Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Lines: 125 [ Toronto Star, May 12, 1988. Page 1 lead story. By Paul Bilodeau ] For the second time in three years, a jury has found Ernst Zundel guilty of publishing false statements denying the Holocaust. Zundel, defiant and unrepentant after hearing yesterday's verdict, said he fully expects to go to jail when he is sentenced tomorrow morning by Judge Ron Thomas. Zundel vowed to appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court of Canada if necessary -- "As long as the Canadian taxpayer is willing to foot the bill for my political prosecutions." But the Carlton St. publisher had to share the spotlight with an angry Holocaust survivor whose family was slaughtered after the Nazis swept into Yugoslavia. While Zundel was being interviewed by reporters outside the courthouse, Dr. Boris Altshtater shouted that he lost 90 per cent of his family in Nazi concentration camps. The Jewish man's passionate denouncement overshadowed Zundel's repeated assertion that the Holocaust was a "hoax" and that Canadians were "mentally ill" for believing the Nazis exterminated Jews in World War II. The portly, balding Zundel, 49, had showed little emotion when the six men and five women returned a guilty verdict shortly before 5 p.m. yesterday, after deliberating 17 hours over two days. ... Zundel was charged in 1984 in a private prosecution brought by Sabina Citron of Toronto, a survivor of Nazi death camps and founder of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association.... "They might have questions about the Holocaust, but that does not give them the right to say Jews are hoaxers and swindlers," Citron told the Star in an earlier interview... In March, 1985, after a sensation seven-week jury trial, Zundel had been sentenced to 15 months in jail for publishing [the] 32-page pamphlet, *Did Six Million Really Die?* District Court Judge Hugh Locke also banned him from making public statements on the Holocaust for three years. But the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the conviction last year and ordered a new trial, citing legal errors Locke made during the trial. [The most substantial error was the charge to the jury, where the judge told the jurors they could convict if they found Zundel had no honest belief in the truth of the pamphlet; the Court of Appeal ruled that the jurors should have been charged to convict only if they found Zundel knew the contents were false. -DS] The retrial began Jan. 18 to a packed courtroom but little media attention. [The Star carried a daily article of about 12 column inches on page 2, reporting progress. But all the media, in response to complaints about their handling of the last trial, refrained from sensationalizing the ridiculous defense testimony. -DS] Judge Thomas ... used the Court of Appeal judgment as a guide to avoid the pitfalls of the first trial. He excluded evidence about Zundel's right to "freedom of expression" which the appeal court said did not apply to this case. [I've dealt with the reasons in a previous posting. Essentially, the concept doesn't apply to known falsehoods. -DS] [Defence lawyer Douglas] Christie called for a mistrial -- one of five such applications he made during the trial -- after Thomas took "judicial notice" of the Holocaust. Thomas ruled that the Nazi extermination of millions of Jews "is so notorious as to not to be the subject of dispute among reasonable persons." The ruling seemed to nullify the theme of Zundel's pamphlet, but it did not prevent Christie from calling 23 witnesses, most of whom denied the Holocaust. Crown Attorney John Pearson, relaxing after the jury verdict yesterday, said he was pleased that he had achieved both his objectives -- to ensure Zundel got a fair trial, and to make sure the jury understood the prosecution evidence. Pearson argued that Zundel did not really believe what he published -- that the Holocaust was a huge hoax perpetrated by Zionists to gain advantages for the state of Israel. Pearson told the jury that Zundel was really out to clear the Nazi record of its worst atrocity: the planned extermination of six million Jews. The prosecution was made more difficult because Zundel did not testify, as he had done in his first trial. The jury was left to speculate on his motives for publishing the pamphlet. But Pearson showed the jury books that Zundel wrote praising Adolf Hitler, and called Holocaust historians and an international Red Cross delegate as witnesses to show the many false and misleading statements in the pamphlet. ... Christie, who had cultivated the media during the first trial, has refused all comment, greeting reporters with a vacant stare. The long trial appeared to take its toll on the lawyer from Victoria. Almost from the outset there were heated exchanges between the judge and Christie, who adopted an aggressive stance toward the judge's rulings. [Comment: I'm reporting this for information purposes. We've been through the debate about the appropriateness of convicting Zundel many times on the net. Unless you have something entirely new to add which hasn't been said before, let's not start that whole debate again. Clearly, Canadian law as in force today in Ontario permits convictions for wilfully publishing news that the accused knows is false and that is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest. -DS] David Sherman (a lawyer, but not speaking for) The Law Society of Upper Canada -- { uunet!mnetor pyramid!utai decvax!utcsri ihnp4!utzoo } !lsuc!dave