Convicted Holocaust denier to be released from German prison

Far-right activist Ernst Zundel will soon be released from prison after serving his five-year sentence for denying the Holocaust, a German prosecutor said Wednesday. Mannheim prosecutor Andreas Grossmann said Zundel, 70, will be released on March 1 after receiving credit for time served ahead of his 2007 trial. Zundel was deported from Canada in 2005. He was convicted in February 2007 of 14 counts of inciting hatred for years of anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a Web site devoted to denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany. Prosecutors were able to bring charges in Germany because the Web site was accessible there. Zundel, who also has lived in Tennessee, and his supporters had argued he was exercising his right to free speech. Zundel is a German citizen so he can go wherever he wants in the country following his release, Grossmann said, adding that he has relatives in the Stuttgart area. Grossmann said he understood, however, that Zundel has been banned by the United States and Canada from returning to those countries. Zundel's wife, Ingrid Zundel, told The Associated Press in an e-mail that he was not technically barred from North America but that they expect huge diplomatic barriers to keep him inside Germany where freedom of speech simply doesn't exist. She said she has been in regular contact with her husband and that he fears for his life upon his release, "because he is ferociously hated by many for his writings about the Holocaust." "We fear that, at the very least, he will be re-arrested on flimsiest pretense and put back into prison for life," she said. Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials twice rejected his attempts to obtain Canadian citizenship, and he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, until being deported to Canada in 2003 for alleged immigration violations. In February 2005, a Canadian judge ruled that Zundel's activities were not only a threat to national security, but the international community of nations as well, clearing the way for his deportation to Germany. Since his arrest, Ingrid Zundel - who has remained in the U.S. - said she has been running the Zundelsite Web site, so she cannot risk being present when her husband is released. "I would be risking immediate arrest if I stepped on German soil," she said.