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:

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 in 1995. 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 in late 2000. As an automatic move in all asylum proceedings, the U.S. authorities filed a counter-application to have Rudolf removed from the U.S. They claimed that due to his controversial writings Rudolf was not a persecutee but a persecutor. A motion by the U.S. government to have Rudolf arrested and deported immediately was forestalled in 2001 by the Immigration Judge hearing the case. The case then dragged on for four years on a pure administrative level.

In the meantime 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 imprisonment in Germany. German authorities also motioned to confiscate his property, because they claim it was all acquired with money gained from "illegal" activities. In 2003 the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Services (INS – now part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE) rejected Rudolf's application for political asylum, against which Rudolf filed an appeal with the Board of Appeals of the INS.

In summer of 2004 the German authorities filed an extradition request with the U.S. authorities, but this was turned down, as nothing which Rudolf had done or was doing was illegal under U.S. law. In the meantime Rudolf married a U.S. citizen in September 2004, and based on this he applied for permanent residence in the U.S.

The U.S.A. – No Longer a Safe Haven for the Persecuted

In late 2004, the Board of Appeals of the INS rejected Rudolf's appeal, while regurgitating the disconnected arguments of the Immigration Judge's decision (see above). They also denied that he is even permitted to apply for his immigrant status to be changed form that of an asylum seeker to that of a legal permanent resident based on his marriage with a U.S. spouse. This decision ordered him to be deported in handcuffs, banned for life, with no possible remedy. (In contrast to the European Union, in the U.S. the protection of families has not the status of a constitutional right overriding other law, so deportations can be mandated despite U.S. spouses or dependants.)

The reasoning given by the INS-ICE:

1. Germany is a democracy; its laws were enacted democratically; it is 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. Apart, being democratic isn't the issue. If a democratic majority in Germany decided to enact a law mandating that all Turkish immigrants have to be executed, would that be acceptable? Of course not. If a majority in a democracy persecutes a minority, it is still persecution, even if it is democratic.
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!

After his application for political asylum had been turned down by the administration, Rudolf filed an appeal with the U.S. Federal Court of the 11th Circuit (Atlanta). While this case was pending, the ICE ordered Rudolf and his wife to appear to an interview with the U.S. Immigration Services on October 19, 2005, in order to verify whether their marriage was genuine or not. Their marriage was subsequently certified as valid and genuine, but right after the couple had obtained their certificate, Rudolf was arrested on the pretext that five months earlier he had missed an alleged interview appointment, about whose existence neither he nor his lawyer had ever been informed. The government then moved to deport Rudolf to Germany prior to his case having been heard in court.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates that "no person," so also not an asylum seeker, may be denied due process. Although that was exactly Rudolf's argument when filing an emergency motion to stay his proceedings until after his case had been adjudicated by a court of law, neither the Federal Court in Atlanta nor the U.S. Federal Supreme Court, to which Rudolf had appealed to prevent his deportation, stayed the deportation. They simply ignored the facts by not addressing them. Hence after four weeks of incarceration in the Kenosha County Jail in Wisconsin, where he was the only "non-criminal" prisoner – a fact which perplexed even the guards – Rudolf was deported to Germany on Nov. 14, 2005.

Upon arrival in Germany Rudolf was arrested by the German police at the airport and sent to Rottenburg prison to spend the 14 months of his 1995 verdict, but only two days later this was recognized as an error, as more criminal proceedings were pending against Rudolf. So he was transferred to Stuttgart jail in order to await his new trial for his publication activities during his years abroad.

In early 2006 the U.S. Federal Court decided that Rudolf's asylum application had not been "frivolous," but it considered it without merits anyway, basically following the reasoning of the Immigration Services (see points 1 to 3 above). The court also ruled that the administriation's refusal to adjudicate Rudolf's application for permanent legal residence was illegal. However, the administration's later refusal to adjudicate cases of immigrants who had already been deported (like Rudolf) met the court's later approval, claiming that Rudolf would not suffer any disadvantage from this ex post facto application of new law on his old case, since Rudolf was free to file a new application for permanent residence, once released from prison. The issue of denial of due process by premature deportation during pending proceedings in spite of the Fifth Amendment was not address by the court in its verdict at all.

The frivolity of Rudolf's application out of the way, the maximum ban the U.S. authorities could declare against Rudolf to legally return to the U.S. was five years, a period which expired on Nov. 15, 2010.

In late 2006 Rudolf was put on trial in Mannheim, Germany, and at the end of these proceedings he received a prison sentence of 30 months (2.5 years) on March 15, 2007, to commence immediately. Rudolf accepted this ruling, which became effective immediately. He subsequently served his time in various prisons (Heidelberg, Ulm, Mannheim, Rottenburg) and was released on July 5, 2009.

As a spouse of a U.S. citizen Rudolf has now a statutory right to return to the U.S. and obtain permanent legal residence – the so-called "green card." The only possibility for the U.S. authorities to deny him this right would have been to prove that he has been sentenced for a "crime of moral turpitude," defined according to U.S. case law for prosecutable offenses according to U.S.(!) law. Since Rudolf has never committed any act that would be a crime under U.S. law, he should have been able to return to his family for good in late 2010, but...

But in these cases one never knows...

U.S. Government Violates The Law Once More

Water does flow uphill! Although Rudolf's ban to return to the U.S. expired on November 14, 2010, he has still not been allowed to return home. The U.S. consulate dealing with Rudolf's "greencard" simply refuses to adjudicate his case, claiming that "the case is so complicated that we cannot even give you an estimate as to how long it will take to come to a decision." Hence Rudolf subsequently sued the government with a Writ of Mandamus in order to force them to render a decision. Then, finally, in late May 2011 the U.S. Government indicated that his criminal convictions in Germany do not constitute crimes of moral turpitude. The final hurdle was therefore taken. After a number of bureaucratic procedures, Rudolf was the proud owner of an immigrant visa in mid-July 2011. Shortly thereafter he booked a flight and flew back home... [read more...]

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.