Wagner
February 1st, 2008, 01:03 AM
http://www.germarrudolf.com/pics/2ss.jpg
http://www.germarrudolf.com/
Germar Rudolf
The Persecution of a German Scholar
Imagine an expert in DNA analyses. He is asked to verify if a defendant is the father of a child. He complies and confirms the fatherhood of the defendant. With his testimony, however, the expert contradicts the statements of many witnesses who claim the opposite. Imagine the judge ruling not to admit the expert testimony because it makes spectators assume that the witnesses lied out of sinister motives. The judge even puts the expert witness on trial for inciting hatred against the witnesses and sentences him to 14 months in jail. You think it can’t happen? It does happen in Germany...
German scholar Germar Rudolf has authored, edited and published numerous academic articles, brochures, books, and magazines in the German and in the English languages both in his native Germany and abroad. Until his abrupt deportation from the United States in Nov. 2005, he was the owner of a university-press-style publishing house that focused on detailed scientific and archival studies of well-defined historical topics. He is lauded as an academic of high standards by many professors from around the world. Yet the German authorities imprisoned him exactly because of his scholarly success, for his ground-breaking academic writings.
Rudolf’s crime: he did not obey a German penal law that forces everybody to parrot the official version of a detail of German history. You may wonder what detail that may be, but to be sure, it does not matter, because a government that prescribes the writing of history by penal law is dictating to its citizens what to think, and that is the exact definition of a dictatorship. Period.
To summarize Germar’s deeds:
An Academic "Thought Criminal"
Germar Rudolf (pictured) was asked by various defense teams to testify as an expert in chemistry at trials in Germany. Yet the judges refused to hear his testimony in open violation of German law, which does not allow the rejection of expert witnesses already present in the court room.
Rudolf’s rejected expert report was then published by a defendant who had requested it for his defense. This defendant considered it vital to draw attention to this illegal suppression of evidence, which he sought to do by adding a perfectly legitimate, though polemical, introduction and appendix to Rudolf’s report. Thanks to this publication, Rudolf was sentenced to 14 months in prison. The court argued that Rudolf’s findings in combination with the defendant’s comments could arouse hostile emotions against witnesses, whose testimonies conflicted with Rudolf’s findings.
A year later, Rudolf published a large scientific book about similar issues, for which he was also indicted. Although historians testified during this trial that Rudolf’s work is scientific and thus protected by Germany’s constitution, the book was nevertheless confiscated and burned by order of the court. Rudolf subsequently fled to England, where he established a small publishing firm for scholarly material similar to what he was prosecuted for in Germany. As a result, Germany requested his extradition. Therefore, Rudolf fled to America and applied for political asylum.
Rudolf continued his scholarly publishing activities in the "Land of the Free," lauded by scholars from around the world, but hated by German authorities. Rudolf defied and undermined German censorship, considered among the harshest worldwide. Hence, more than 30 criminal investigations were pending against him in Germany for his peaceful "thought crimes," each of them perfectly legal in the U.S., but punishable with up to five years in jail in Germany. German authorities also ordered the confiscation of his property, because they claim it was all acquired with money gained from "illegal" activities.
The U.S.A. – Still a Safe Haven for the Persecuted?
In 2004, the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Services (INS – now part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE) rejected Rudolf’s application for political asylum. They ordered him to be deported in handcuffs, banned for life, with no possible remedy. Not even his marriage to a U.S. citizen with a child expected was considered.
The reasoning given by the INS-ICE:
1. Germany is a democracy, a state under the rule of law. Hence, Rudolf is not fleeing persecution, but lawful prosecution.
2. Considering Germany’s Nazi past, it has to censor its citizens in order to make sure that Nazism will never rise again.
3. Rejecting evidence is OK, because the U.S. also has rules for rejecting evidence. E.g., if an expert has already proved a point at issue, witnesses who contradict this expert can be rejected.
4. Rudolf’s application was found to be "frivolous" (deceitful), the most severe immigration violation, resulting in the harshest punishment possible.
This INS-ICE ruling is outrageous, because:
1. Just calling oneself a democracy doesn’t make it one. Almost all dictatorships call themselves "democracies" and "states under the rule of law." The proof lies in Germany’s civil rights record, not in its law books.
2. Justifying German censorship is like saying: Because Germany persecuted minorities, jailed dissenters, and burned books in the past, it now has an obligation to persecute minorities, jail dissenters, and burn books!
3. The INS has it upside down: Germany not only rejects, it jails experts because their research results disagree with witnesses.
4. Rudolf learned about the accusation of having filed a "frivolous" application only in the verdict, which named no evidence for it. It is as if someone were tried for theft, then sentenced for murder without proof!
Due Process Aborted
Apart from his dealings with INS-ICE, Rudolf pursued legal processes in the U.S. federal courts that, by contrast, proceeded and continue to proceed generally favorably. In October 2005 ICE intervened in this process and after a brief incarceration deported Rudolf in chains to Germany, where he was immediately confined in a maximum security prison near Stuttgart. In late 2006 – early 2007 he was put on trial in Mannheim and received a prison sentence of two and one-half years, to commence after serving the earlier 14 month sentence.
A favorable court ruling in March 2006 confirmed Rudolf’s right to return to the U.S.A. to apply for residency based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. This ruling has been resisted by ICE, which argues that a new regulation formulated by them can be applied retroactively to Germar. That claim was challenged in court by Germar in Sept. 2007 but has not, as of 18 Dec. 2007, been decided by the court. Legal arguments aside, the bottom line is that ICE is doing everything possible to deny Germar U.S. residency. The authority of this purely administrative agency is great in this area, as the subjects involved do not have the rights of legal residents. However the courts still have the last word, provided the applicant can sustain the long legal process required.
The World’s Leading Historical Dissident
The reason for all this? Germar Rudolf was the world’s leading publisher of independent Holocaust studies not funded by any government. He published university-style research that critically re-examined and corrected generally held views of the Holocaust, while at the same time confirming the unjust suffering inflicted upon Jews during that human catastrophe.
Germar’s publishing operations have, since his deportation from the U.S., passed to other, unrelated people.
But doubting aspects of the official version of the Holocaust, even if it confirms the injustice done to Jews, offends powerful people in the U.S. In Germany, it is a crime so severe that the German authorities not only jail dissenters, burn their books, and block their Internet sites, but also outlaw motions to introduce dissenting evidence in trials and prosecute defense lawyers who dare to do so anyway.
http://www.germarrudolf.com/
Germar Rudolf
The Persecution of a German Scholar
Imagine an expert in DNA analyses. He is asked to verify if a defendant is the father of a child. He complies and confirms the fatherhood of the defendant. With his testimony, however, the expert contradicts the statements of many witnesses who claim the opposite. Imagine the judge ruling not to admit the expert testimony because it makes spectators assume that the witnesses lied out of sinister motives. The judge even puts the expert witness on trial for inciting hatred against the witnesses and sentences him to 14 months in jail. You think it can’t happen? It does happen in Germany...
German scholar Germar Rudolf has authored, edited and published numerous academic articles, brochures, books, and magazines in the German and in the English languages both in his native Germany and abroad. Until his abrupt deportation from the United States in Nov. 2005, he was the owner of a university-press-style publishing house that focused on detailed scientific and archival studies of well-defined historical topics. He is lauded as an academic of high standards by many professors from around the world. Yet the German authorities imprisoned him exactly because of his scholarly success, for his ground-breaking academic writings.
Rudolf’s crime: he did not obey a German penal law that forces everybody to parrot the official version of a detail of German history. You may wonder what detail that may be, but to be sure, it does not matter, because a government that prescribes the writing of history by penal law is dictating to its citizens what to think, and that is the exact definition of a dictatorship. Period.
To summarize Germar’s deeds:
An Academic "Thought Criminal"
Germar Rudolf (pictured) was asked by various defense teams to testify as an expert in chemistry at trials in Germany. Yet the judges refused to hear his testimony in open violation of German law, which does not allow the rejection of expert witnesses already present in the court room.
Rudolf’s rejected expert report was then published by a defendant who had requested it for his defense. This defendant considered it vital to draw attention to this illegal suppression of evidence, which he sought to do by adding a perfectly legitimate, though polemical, introduction and appendix to Rudolf’s report. Thanks to this publication, Rudolf was sentenced to 14 months in prison. The court argued that Rudolf’s findings in combination with the defendant’s comments could arouse hostile emotions against witnesses, whose testimonies conflicted with Rudolf’s findings.
A year later, Rudolf published a large scientific book about similar issues, for which he was also indicted. Although historians testified during this trial that Rudolf’s work is scientific and thus protected by Germany’s constitution, the book was nevertheless confiscated and burned by order of the court. Rudolf subsequently fled to England, where he established a small publishing firm for scholarly material similar to what he was prosecuted for in Germany. As a result, Germany requested his extradition. Therefore, Rudolf fled to America and applied for political asylum.
Rudolf continued his scholarly publishing activities in the "Land of the Free," lauded by scholars from around the world, but hated by German authorities. Rudolf defied and undermined German censorship, considered among the harshest worldwide. Hence, more than 30 criminal investigations were pending against him in Germany for his peaceful "thought crimes," each of them perfectly legal in the U.S., but punishable with up to five years in jail in Germany. German authorities also ordered the confiscation of his property, because they claim it was all acquired with money gained from "illegal" activities.
The U.S.A. – Still a Safe Haven for the Persecuted?
In 2004, the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Services (INS – now part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE) rejected Rudolf’s application for political asylum. They ordered him to be deported in handcuffs, banned for life, with no possible remedy. Not even his marriage to a U.S. citizen with a child expected was considered.
The reasoning given by the INS-ICE:
1. Germany is a democracy, a state under the rule of law. Hence, Rudolf is not fleeing persecution, but lawful prosecution.
2. Considering Germany’s Nazi past, it has to censor its citizens in order to make sure that Nazism will never rise again.
3. Rejecting evidence is OK, because the U.S. also has rules for rejecting evidence. E.g., if an expert has already proved a point at issue, witnesses who contradict this expert can be rejected.
4. Rudolf’s application was found to be "frivolous" (deceitful), the most severe immigration violation, resulting in the harshest punishment possible.
This INS-ICE ruling is outrageous, because:
1. Just calling oneself a democracy doesn’t make it one. Almost all dictatorships call themselves "democracies" and "states under the rule of law." The proof lies in Germany’s civil rights record, not in its law books.
2. Justifying German censorship is like saying: Because Germany persecuted minorities, jailed dissenters, and burned books in the past, it now has an obligation to persecute minorities, jail dissenters, and burn books!
3. The INS has it upside down: Germany not only rejects, it jails experts because their research results disagree with witnesses.
4. Rudolf learned about the accusation of having filed a "frivolous" application only in the verdict, which named no evidence for it. It is as if someone were tried for theft, then sentenced for murder without proof!
Due Process Aborted
Apart from his dealings with INS-ICE, Rudolf pursued legal processes in the U.S. federal courts that, by contrast, proceeded and continue to proceed generally favorably. In October 2005 ICE intervened in this process and after a brief incarceration deported Rudolf in chains to Germany, where he was immediately confined in a maximum security prison near Stuttgart. In late 2006 – early 2007 he was put on trial in Mannheim and received a prison sentence of two and one-half years, to commence after serving the earlier 14 month sentence.
A favorable court ruling in March 2006 confirmed Rudolf’s right to return to the U.S.A. to apply for residency based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. This ruling has been resisted by ICE, which argues that a new regulation formulated by them can be applied retroactively to Germar. That claim was challenged in court by Germar in Sept. 2007 but has not, as of 18 Dec. 2007, been decided by the court. Legal arguments aside, the bottom line is that ICE is doing everything possible to deny Germar U.S. residency. The authority of this purely administrative agency is great in this area, as the subjects involved do not have the rights of legal residents. However the courts still have the last word, provided the applicant can sustain the long legal process required.
The World’s Leading Historical Dissident
The reason for all this? Germar Rudolf was the world’s leading publisher of independent Holocaust studies not funded by any government. He published university-style research that critically re-examined and corrected generally held views of the Holocaust, while at the same time confirming the unjust suffering inflicted upon Jews during that human catastrophe.
Germar’s publishing operations have, since his deportation from the U.S., passed to other, unrelated people.
But doubting aspects of the official version of the Holocaust, even if it confirms the injustice done to Jews, offends powerful people in the U.S. In Germany, it is a crime so severe that the German authorities not only jail dissenters, burn their books, and block their Internet sites, but also outlaw motions to introduce dissenting evidence in trials and prosecute defense lawyers who dare to do so anyway.