Fair Game – Hunting Germar Rudolf

The Disfranchisement of Unwelcome Citizens[1]

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, many European nations possessed the legal power to disfranchise citizens for gross misdeeds. With the rise of secularized constitutional nations, the use of this power disappeared until it resurfaced in the 3rd Reich as thought crime laws. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the possibility of far-reaching revocations of civil rights was built right into the constitution in Article 18 of the Basic Law, but until recently no use was made of it. Jochen Lober has shown that the equivalent curtailment of the civil rights of citizens has been achieved by extra-constitutional regulation.[2] We will examine here Lober’s question, whether a form of de facto outlawry was introduced with the revision of section 130 of the German Penal Code, which made any kind of Holocaust denial – or revisionism – and opposition to multi-culturalism a potential criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison. This will be done by studying the fate of Auschwitz researcher Diplom-Chemist Germar Rudolf. What happened to him will be examined phenomenologically, not chronologically, in order to focus on the effects of German criminal law on the civil rights of German citizens.

First Step: Denunciation

From September 20 to 22, 1991, a seminar took place in Nuremberg (Bavaria) on Holocaust revisionism, sponsored by the libertarian Bavarian Thomas Dehler Foundation.

Among the participants, besides Rudolf, there was a certain Diplom-Physicist Hermann Körber from Bünde, in northern Germany. His behavior during the seminar was highly unpleasant. During a discussion period, for example, he stated that the German people should not only be considered as murderers, but as plunderers as well. He also suggested that the Germans themselves were to blame for the many deaths among old people, women and children that were caused by the Allied aerial bombardment, because they had started the bombing (which is not true) and had knowingly failed to evacuate the civil population (which was also not true, since many children were sent to the country). During the Sunday dinner, Körber threatened a fellow participant sitting at his table with a dinner knife because the person did not share his opinion on the Holocaust, and at the close on Sunday afternoon, he loudly called the participants Germar Rudolf and Winfried Zwerenz pigs, because they had disagreed with him on scientific grounds.

On November 5, 1992, this Hermann Körber filed a criminal complaint with state attorney Baumann in Schweinfurt against Rudolf for instigating Otto Ernst Remer to incitement to racial hatred.[3] He claimed that it was Rudolf and his expert report that had caused Remer to begin publishing material on the Holocaust in his Remer Depesche.[4] Subsequently, the state attorney of Schweinfurt initiated a criminal investigation against Rudolf on grounds of incitement to racial hatred, and others, in which O. E. Remer was also named.[5] Both defendant denied the accusations.

Then, on April, 19, 1993, at the state attorney’s office in Bielefeld, Körber
filed a witness affidavit in which he stated:[6]

On April 27, 1993, as proof of his assertion that Rudolf was knowingly deceitful, Körber filed another affidavit in which he interpreted Rudolf’s technical arguments made in an exchange of correspondence with Werner Wegner, as incitement to racial hatred, and characterized Rudolf’s assertion that unambiguous technical evidence was superior to ambiguous documentary evidence as "unscientific and unprofessional procedure".[7]

In another affidavit made on April 30, 1993, Körber asserted falsely that Rudolf supported

"the Leuchter thesis that there was a danger of explosion throughout the Auschwitz compound, at least for structures, whenever gassing operations with Zyklon B were going on."

Rudolf had in fact stated that the use of high concentrations of Zyklon B to reduce execution periods to minutes or seconds, as the witnesses had reported, would mean that there would be safety problems due to explosive concentrations of hydrogen cyanide.[8] He had never spoken nor written of a general danger of explosion.

The busy witness Körber was at it again on May 26, 1993, this time to assert that the references to the Rudolf Report in various editions of the Remer Depesche proved that the author Rudolf was the cause. Körber also claimed that Rudolf’s attempt to testify as an expert witness, which was refused by the court, constituted conspiracy to commit perjury.[9] On June 7, 1993, he repeated his accusations that Rudolf had instigated Remer to his misdeeds in the Remer Depesche, and offered evidence that would defer the possible termination of the investigation.[10]

It should be pointed out that there is no mention among Körber’s statements of the fact that Rudolf had written him a lengthy letter in January 1993, in which Rudolf presented detailed arguments supporting the conclusions of his report.[11] Körber had never answered the letter. His only response had been to make false accusations about Rudolf to the police.

In mid-April 1993, the state attorney of Stuttgart set in motion another prosecution against Rudolf in addition to the ongoing prosecution concerning incitement. This one was initiated by retired Generalmajor O. E. Remer’s distribution of a commented version of the Rudolf Report.

The first copies of Remer’s version were sent to various notable personalities in politics, justice, and science on April 16, 1993.[12] On the same day, Prof. Dr. Hanns F. Zacher, President of the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, MPG), received a call from the Chairman of the Directorate of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany), Ignatz Bubis, in which Herr Bubis told Prof. Zacher of his concern about the effect of the Rudolf Report by Diplom-Chemist Rudolf, at that time an MPG employee.[13] It is not known what Prof. Zacher did in response to the call. In any case there was no attempt by the MPG administration to terminate Rudolf’s employment at that time.

In mid-May 1993, Rudolf received at his office two calls from journalists (the German weekly magazine stern and the private TV station SAT 1) dealing with the distribution of the Remer version. During one of these calls, a colleague of Rudolf was in the room. The colleague later told another colleague, Jörg Sassmannshausen, who immediately reported the event to the executive Director of the Max Planck Institute, Prof. Arndt Simon.[14] Subsequently, Rudolf was asked not to appear at the Institute anymore unless at the explicit request of his doctoral supervisor, Prof. Dr. H. G. von Schnering, in order to make sure that there might be no further contact with journalists during work hours. His employment contract had not been mentioned.

This request was subsequently repeated in writing. Nine days afterwards, Rudolf entered the Max Planck Institute in order to copy some documents and to discuss the reproduction of his doctoral thesis with his doctoral supervisor. He deliberately avoided his office in order to avoid being confronted with questions from the media. Rudolf was seen by Institute workers, however, and they reported his presence to the executive director.

Second Step: Professional Ruin

Rudolf had neglected to ask his doctoral supervisor for permission to enter the Institute. The following day he was asked to accept termination of his employment contract without notice.[15] The justification for this was primarily that Rudolf had sent letters on stationary with the Max Planck Institute letterhead while working on the Report. Rudolf had privately engaged the Fresenius Institute to analyze the wall samples from Auschwitz for traces of cyanide. But when the Fresenius Institute was already working on his samples in Rudolf’s presence, he handed in a letter typed on a letter head of his employer with a detailed specification of the work to be conducted by the Fresenius Institute and a detailed description of the samples. Though the unauthorized use of official letterheads for private purposes was widespread at the Max Planck Institute at the time, in Rudolf’s case it became a no-no. It was this use of Institute letterhead, about which the management of the Institute first became aware through news reports,[16] that established the connection of the Institute with the Rudolf Report.

Apparently because of the failure of the MPG to respond to the intercession of I. Bubis (see above), on June 22, 1993, the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany) felt it necessary to notify the President of the MPG that he was expected to take appropriate measures to restrict the activities of Report researcher Germar Rudolf. On July 14, 1993, the President of the MPG informed the Central Council that the MPG had no further responsibility for the activities of Herr Rudolf, since he had been fired.

The subsequent labor court proceeding instituted by Rudolf against the Max Planck Institute with respect to his termination without notice turned on the question, whether the generally-practiced and in his case already known infraction "private use of official letterhead" could be used as grounds for dismissal without notice when the Auschwitz issue was mixed in. Labor court judge Stolz made it clear that an employer could dismiss an employee anytime who held such views as the plaintiff Germar Rudolf. This amounts to the principle that Rudolf and others who think like him are outlaws with respect to the labor law. For reasons of social concern, the Max Planck Institute offered to make an agreement with the plaintiff out of court, by which the termination without notice would be revoked and at the same time replaced by a mutual agreement that the employment contract would be terminated, barring further recourse.[17]

Despite this dispute between Rudolf and his now former employer, his doctoral supervisor Prof. H. G. von Schnering continued to support his doctoral candidate and in July 1993 certified that Rudolf possessed the necessary professional and ethical qualification to take the next step, the final examination called the Rigorosum. In that month, Rudolf submitted to the University of Stuttgart his doctoral thesis with all necessary supporting documents and applied for admission to the Rigorosum. By fall 1993, however, permission for the promotion had still not been granted. On inquiry at the University, Rudolf was told that his application had been put on hold because of the criminal investigation initiated against Rudolf for incitement to racial hatred as well as that against O. E. Remer for distribution of Remer’s version of the Rudolf Report. The University of Stuttgart maintained that it was questionable whether the candidate possessed the necessary ethical qualification.

The grounds for this decision was section 4 of the Law On Academic Degrees, enacted by Adolf Hitler in 1939 and still in force in Germany today. By this provision, an academic degree can be revoked or withheld, if one does not possess the necessary ethical qualification. According to a decision of the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg, an academic title can only be withheld when there has been a judicial sentence for a serious crime that has been entered on the person’s police record of conduct.[18]

Since at the time of his application for admission to the Rigorosum 1) Rudolf had not been judicially sentenced and 2) such a decision was not expected by him, Rudolf filed a complaint against the University of Stuttgart in the County Court of Stuttgart for failure to act. At the behest of the University of Stuttgart, the County Court Stuttgart stalled on grounds that the ongoing criminal proceeding against Rudolf would have to be concluded before it could be decided whether Rudolf possessed the necessary qualifications for promotion.[19]

After the sentence against Rudolf was handed down in March 1996, the University of Stuttgart advised him that it was in his best interest to withdraw his application for promotion, since otherwise the University most likely would refuse his application because of Rudolf’s conviction for a severe crime. Rudolf complied, because he might otherwise have to reckon with the problem that his doctoral work might be unacceptable everywhere else in the world.[20]

By good fortune, in fall 1994 Rudolf obtained a position as a field representative with a firm dealing in corrosion inhibiting products. During her research into “right-wing businesses,” left-wing journalist F. Hundseder stumbled onto the fact that Rudolf was employed at one of them. In the ARD broadcast Panorama in mid-May 1995, this discovery was described as a scandal, and both the company and their employee Rudolf as heinous Neo-Nazis. The company came immediately under such heavy pressure from customers, suppliers, employees and competitors that by mutual agreement they and Rudolf terminated his employment contract in order to prevent further loss to the company. Due to this denunciation by the media, Rudolf lost his job within a few days.

In the current state of German labor law, if in future applications for employment Rudolf were not to mention his revisionist activities and this were to become known to his employer, it would be considered grounds for dismissal. If he duly mentioned these activities, however, he could expect not to find any ordinary employment anywhere in Germany.[21]

Third Step: Persecution through Prosecution

A more complete analysis of the prosecution against Rudolf will be left to other works. Rudolf was accused not only because of Remer’s political commentary, which was falsely attributed to Rudolf, but also because of the purely technical conclusions in his Report.[22] In the principal hearing Presiding Judge Dr. Dietmar Mayer stated that the competence of the court did not extend to the evaluation of the scientific validity of the expert report. Because of this, the contents of the expert report were not addressed in the proceeding, but only the question whether the defendant was responsible for Remer’s commentary.

In its decision, the court made no secret of the fact that it held revisionist thinking itself to be reprehensible and punishable by increasing the severity of the sentence.[23] However, the sentence against Rudolf to 14 months prison without probation was based on the false contention that Rudolf had at least knowingly contributed to the political commentary contained in Remer’s version of his expert report. The court justified its sentence with a tiresomely assembled chain of proofs amounting to 240 pages which in decisive points departed from the actual evidence and which completely ignored the contradictory evidence on the main point of the defense.

The chemical and construction problems of the buildings at Auschwitz dealt with in the Rudolf Report were characterized by the court as "hardly clarifiable details of the National Socialist mass-crimes", thus, under no circumstance a matter of “common knowledge.”[24]

Rudolf’s trial on account of the business with Remer’s version ended in summer 1995. Under which star this trial was held was made blindingly clear by a document from the trial records: Rudolf’s judges in the District Court of Stuttgart wanted to prevent that they themselves should come under the wheels of denunciation and inquisition, as had the judges of the District Court of Mannheim in the Günter Deckert Case, who were massively criticized by media and politicians, threatened with prosecution, and eventually sent to early retirement because they had dared to call a leading revisionist a man of good character and sentence him only to one year imprisonment with probation. Before the opening of the trial against Rudolf, the judges therefore carefully inquired with the German Federal Supreme Court with respect to its decision against Günter Deckert and receive an immediate reply.[25] Since the German Federal Supreme Court revised the Deckert decision so many times until a sentence of imprisonment without probation was certain, it is obvious that in the Rudolf Case the same sentence of imprisonment without probation was the only option if the judges wanted to stay out of trouble.

At the same time as the above-mentioned prosecution, there were three other prosecutions underway against Rudolf. In the first case, he was accused of being mainly or at least partially responsible for the publication of the journals Remer Depesche and Deutschland Report.[26] The second involved his publication of the work Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (Engl. edition: Dissecting the Holocaust.[27] The third was directed against an exchange of correspondence between Rudolf and the Krakow Institute for Forensic Research on chemical questions concerning the gas chambers of Auschwitz that was published in Sleipnir, issue 3, 1995.[28]

It was clear already then that these would not be the last measures taken against Rudolf, especially since he intended to defend himself in print. In view of the fact that the District Court of Stuttgart was able to find the defendant guilty contrary to the evidence, one could justifiably fear that in each outstanding trial, the innocent defendant would be found just as guilty, and that he would find himself incarcerated under the terms of several sentences of increasing severity.

In the meantime, Rudolf’s home had been searched three times, and each time books, archives, correspondence, technical data and his computer equipment were seized. The principal loss was not that of physical items, but the intellectual loss of data and archive material. The result was that Rudolf could no longer work as a scientist and also could not defend himself unrestrictedly in court, since his resources to do so were continually taken away. Even the standard literature on the Holocaust was confiscated.

Only those who have themselves undergone the same thing can judge the psychological stress caused to an innocent person through undergoing years-long criminal prosecutions. In addition to these psychic burdens, there are the legal expenses to consider. Currently, they can be calculated only with difficulty but, loosely estimated, they must run into a few hundred thousand dollars. It is clear that at the close of the trial against him, Rudolf was financially ruined for the foreseeable future – quite apart from the fact that for the foreseeable future he would be given no chance to meet these burdens through employment in his profession, at least not within Germany.

Fourth Step: Defamation

At the close of the labor court hearing of the case against the Max Planck Institute, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA)published its already mentioned false announcement on the Rudolf Report.

Rudolf not only proved that the expert opinion cited in this announcement by the DPA was wholly fabricated – the MPG distanced itself from the announcement – but also that the report based on the phantom opinion is so false that no expert in the world would embrace it. But this does not hinder the media from spreading the announcement far and wide and using it as proof of the obvious falseness of the Rudolf Report.[29] In the meantime, this false press release even appeared in the media in foreign countries.[30] Since then, Rudolf has been defamed as a right-wing radical,[31] a right-wing extremist,[32] a Neo-Nazi[33] and a brown doctoral candidate.[34] His Report is always named in quotation-marks, and characterized as hack-work[35] or merely as a "false report".[36] Unfounded accusations of xenophobia[37] are accompanied by the false assertion of Judge Dr. Mayer that Rudolf was deeply marked by anti-Semitism, which, since it is wrong, is all the more ferociously maintained.

By 1994, Rudolf had had no success with his attempts to defend himself against the effects of hostile descriptions, but this was due more to financial difficulties than to judicial defeats.[38] But once Rudolf was sentenced for his supposed crime, the media declared open season on him.

Fifth Step: Destruction of the Personal World

When the ARD smeared Rudolf in the most vicious way in its spring 1994 broadcast Report,[39] Rudolf’s parents distanced themselves from him and refused to come to his wedding, scheduled for several weeks later. All his relatives joined them in this, except for his siblings.[40] His godmother Hannelore Dörschler distanced herself expressly from the views of the people with whom Rudolf surrounded himself, without knowing with which persons Rudolf actually surrounded himself or what views they held.[41]

Since November 2, 1983, Rudolf had belonged to the Catholic German Student Fraternity AV Tuisconia Königsberg in Bonn. This fraternity is a member of an umbrella organization that claims to be the largest academic organization of Europe, and to which famous personalities belong(ed): Josef Cardinal Höffner, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Friedrich Cardinal Wetter, Archbishop Johannes Dyba, Franz-Josef Strauß (former Ministerpresident of Bavaria, Federal Defense Minister), Philipp Jenninger (former President of the German Parliament), Matthias Wissmann (former Minister for Science and Technology), Alexander von Stahl (former federal general state attorney), Herbert Hupka, Rainer Barzel, Otto von Habsburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince von Hohenzollern, Prof. Peter Berglar, Prof. Josef Stingl, Thomas Gottschalk and others.[42]

When Rudolf’s revisionist activity became known in spring 1994, the umbrella organization exerted pressure on Rudolf’s organization to expel him. Because of this, his organization convened a session of various of its members that spring, without the knowledge or participation of Rudolf, at which his revisionist activity was discussed. An expulsion process followed that held a hearing on August 20, 1994, and ended by expelling him in the fall.

This expulsion was by reason that:[43]

The Patria Principle is one of the four principles of the semi-conservative umbrella organization.[44] Today, the principle is primarily understood as meaning constitutional patriotism. It is left to the reader to judge the mental health of the lawyers that composed these pronouncements. The fact is that the decision to expel Rudolf because of the pressure from the superior organization was inescapable, and it was admitted that the decision would have been otherwise, had there been no outside pressure.[45]

Sixth Step: Homelessness

When the police searched Rudolf’s home a second time on August 18, 1994, the local media described him as a well-known right-wing extremist personality. In the small village of Jettingen, where Rudolf lived at the time, it was thought necessary to do something to rid the town of this unwelcome citizen. It was made clear to Rudolf’s landlord that the community did not wish him to lease a dwelling to Rudolf. It was also made clear to the landlord that he should have an interest in getting rid of his lessee, too, since otherwise he would have to deal with such things as that his son could no longer bring his friends home, because their parents would not allow them to enter a house in which Neo-Nazis lived.[46] Therefore, Rudolf’s occupancy of the dwelling was terminated as soon as the lease allowed, at a time when his wife expected the birth of their first child within four weeks.[47]

When the landlords of the dwelling that Rudolf had rented thereafter, the couple Sedlatschek of Steinenbronn, learned from the news on June 23, 1995, about the fact that Rudolf had been sentenced to 14 months imprisonment, they had their lawyers communicate the following to him:[48]

When Rudolf requested his landlord to withdraw the termination, threatening otherwise he would file a counter-complaint, the landlord threatened eviction. For private reasons, among them that his wife was expecting her second child, he submitted, found a new residence and settled with his landlord out of court.

Seventh Step: Special Treatment

On May 5, 1995, the GRÜNE/Alternative Liste (a radical-left environmental splinter party) of the parliament of Hamburg demanded access to court records in the Rudolf case. Though denied at first, a subsequent request for records access on July 3, 1995, apparently succeeded,[49] although it is not legal to grant access to the court records to outside persons who have no direct interest in a case. It is reasonable to fear that the records may have come into the hands of radical anti-fascist groups, where data on witnesses could be collected and compared.

The dot on the “i” was the request on October 16, 1994, of the Project for Study of Anti-Semitism, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Tel Aviv, in which a certain Sarah Rembiszewski requested information on the state of Rudolf’s prosecution.[50] The judges also were aware of the world-wide attention on the case. Tel Aviv also pressed for records access. Was it possible to hope that records access would remain denied despite the ever more strident pleas out of Tel Aviv, inasmuch as the research institute has no legal claim to such access? Under current law, access to court records cannot normally be granted to outside persons with no interest in a case. If it should turn out that Tel Aviv got access to the records without legal ground, that therefore Jews in Germany still receive Sonderbehandlung (special treatment),[51] presumably a copy of the records will soon appear in the offices of a university that probably would like to have intimate details of the revisionist scene in Germany. It is even likely the records will find their way to other offices where a more active use might be made of them.

Eighth Step: Destruction of the Family

After his 14 months prison sentence was confirmed in March 1996 by the German Federal Supreme Court, and considering the prospect of perhaps even more severe convictions in several other pending criminal investigations, probably ending with a summary sentence of up to four years in prison, Rudolf decided to leave Germany with his family and to settle in England, where he thought freedom of speech was more than mere lip service. Having built up a revisionist publishing company abroad, his wife decided at the end of 1998 that she could not bear the life in exile, permanently fearing the extradition of her husband, being separated from all her old friends and relatives, having difficulties to find new friends and acquaintances, and thus heavily suffering from homesickness. Hence, in early 1999, she and their two children returned to Germany and later started the divorce procedure from her husband, leaving him alone in exile.

In fall 1999, when the British media started a smear campaign against Rudolf, his wife’s nightmare came true: Rudolf became fair game of British politics, media and the justice system.[52] Before this witch hunt began, it had been possible for his wife and his children to visit Rudolf frequently. But ever since it has been extremely difficult, since Rudolf left Europe in late 1999 and entered the USA, where he applied for political asylum in October 2000. Especially the abandoned father and his two children suffered terribly under this situation of being almost totally isolated from each other.

In February 2000, Rudolf’s father urged him to get sterilized, since it would be irresponsible both for his first family as well as in general – considering the conditions he had to live in – to father any more children.[53] Fortunately Rudolf did not heed his father…

Formerly, the persecution of the Jews by some Germans led to consideration to get certain Jews sterilized. Today, the persecution of Germans, mainly promoted by some Jewish lobbies, leads to considerations to get Germans sterilized.

In August 2000, a week before he was legally divorced from his wife, Rudolf was told by his mother that his parents had disinherited him and entered his children in their last will instead.

Nineth Step: Loss of Freedom

Rudolf’s asylum case dragged on for many years and was finally decided – rejected – in early 2006. In the meantime Rudolf had married a U.S. citizen, and at the beginning of 2005 he had become the proud father of a daughter. Due to their marriage the Rudolf couple had applied for an adjustment of his immigrant status with the U.S. authorities in late 2004, so that his status as a visitor who had applied for political asylum would be changed to that of a legal permanent resident.

Following conventional procedure, the Rudolf couple was asked to appear at the nearest office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services for an interview on Oct. 19, 2005, which is meant to verify that their marriage truly is a bona fide (real) one. Coming in with their baby in its stroller, it was a breeze for the Rudolf couple to get their marriage certified as genuine.[54]

Yet right after the officer had handed them the certificate of recognition, two other officers declared that Rudolf was under arrest for allegedly having missed an interview appointment five months earlier – which had actually never existed to begin with.[55] Although Rudolf’s lawyer tried to prevent his arrest, and although the local officer was inclined to heed this plea, an order came from Washington that very hour to arrest and prepare Rudolf for his deportation to Germany anyway. His recognized marriage to a U.S. citizen did not impress the U.S. officials at all. They simply claimed that no person who had entered the U.S. as a tourist “on parole” (which applied to Rudolf) had a right to even apply for adjustment of status, a claim which clearly contradicts statutory law, as was later confirmed.

Rudolf was subsequently shackled with hands and feet onto a long chain together with numerous criminals – like dangerous wild animals – and brought to the Kenosha County Jail (WI) awaiting his deportation. According to the wrist ID band he obtained in that prison, he was the only “non-criminal” inmate in the entire facility, which raised the eyebrows of both prisoners and guards.

The U.S. Federal Court in Atlanta dealing with Rudolf’s asylum case – which was still pending then! – turned down Rudolf’s request to have the deportation stayed until the Court had reached a decision. The U.S. Supreme Court did not even bother to look at the case.[56]

So the question is: what is an application for political asylum good for, if a government deports the asylum seeker before the court dealing with the case has decided whether the case has any merits?

And what is the value of the guarantee of due process – given to every person on U.S. soil by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – if the government can simply abort a pending legal review by deporting a defendant to a foreign dungeon? Or as Rudolf’s lawyer put it:[57]

“If all petitioners like Rudolf […] seeking judicial review of agency decisions to issue orders of removal could simply be taken into custody and removed, the Government could avoid judicial review of agency decisions altogether. […] Upon removal, Rudolf [was] separated from his U.S. citizen spouse and infant child and he [faced] continued persecution by the German government. […] After removal, these injuries could not then be redressed by any favorable ruling from this Court. Rudolf’s removal […] violate[ed] his right to due process under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

On November 14, 2005, Rudolf was notified that he will be banned from returning to the U.S for five years for having overstayed his tourist parole time (90 days). Then he was deported to Germany, where German officials immediately arrested him at the airport and ferried him to the Rottenburg prison in southwest Germany, so that he may serve the outstanding 14 months prison sentence. A few days later Rudolf was transferred to the Stuttgart jail, as the German authorities had realized that there are more cases pending against Rudolf for his publishing activities during the previous nine years while residing in England and the U.S. Although Rudolf’s publishing activities there were completely legal in those countries, the German authorities opine that they have to apply the German Penal Code on legal activities in foreign countries as soon as the “effects” of that crime are noticeable in Germany – that is: if the publication deemed illegal can be accessed in Germany via the Internet or if a hardcopy of it is imported to Germany.

When the Federal Court in Atlanta finally rendered a decision in the asylum case some three months after Rudolf’s deportation, it stated simply that the U.S. government has a right to deport any asylum seeker it wishes. Rudolf’s argument that his premature deportation was a crass violation of the right to due process as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was simply hushed up and ignored in the Court’s decision.[58] That’s the way to render “justice” without creating untenable case law: simply sweep the core issues under the carpet and ignore all the evidence.

On the upside, however, the U.S. Federal Court in Atlanta declared as illegal the regulation which the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services had used to justify their refusal to adjudicate Rudolf’s application for adjustment of status to that of a permanent legal resident (or in plain English: they didn’t want to give Rudolf a so-called “green card,” but now they have to…). In summer of 2006 the U.S. government changed this illegal regulation by allowing future applications for permanent residency filed by tourists to be adjudicated. But the new version specifically excludes from an adjudication all old applications filed by persons who have already been deported. All attempts to get legal redress against this regulation failed, because Rudolf would have the opportunity to file a new application after his release from prison.

In the meantime, the new trial against Rudolf was initiated in Mannheim, Germany, in late 2006 and ended in early 2007 with a 30 months prison term for his scholarly writings.[59] Hence, together with his old sentence of 14 months, he had to serve 44 months altogether, which ended on July 5, 2009.

Immediately after his release from prison in Germany, he applied for a U.S. immigrant visa. While his application for a so-called “green card” was pending, he spent a year in England, where his U.S. wife and daughter joined him for five months and where he could give his eldest daughter from his first marriage an opportunity to spend one school year abroad, to become fluent in English, and to get to know her own father.

In April 2010 the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt indicated that the only thing barring them from issuing an immigrant visa to Rudolf is the still pending five year ban to return to the U.S. However, when this ban expired in November 2010, rather than issuing the visa, the consulate repeatedly postponed a decision and finally declared that it cannot foresee any resolution of Rudolf’s case. Against this ongoing procrastination by the U.S. authorities Rudolf filed a Writ of Mandamus on January 31, 2011, in order to force the U.S. government to adjudicate his pending application. After the Federal Judge assigned to the case refused to grant a government motion to have the case dismissed, the government finally started moving. End of May Rudolf was informed that his criminal convictions in Germany do not constitute crimes of moral turpitude in the U.S., which means that the government conceded that Rudolf was eligible for – and indeed entitled to – a “green card” without restrictions. An immigrant visa was finally issued in early July 2011, and not even a month later Germar Rudolf finally managed to return home to his wife and child.

Notes