- For the lay person, it is very easy to lose track of
where the Zundel case is going in the various courts in Canada and the
United States, since so many side tours and detours are involved. One of
the issues Ernst is battling in both court systems has to do with jurisdiction:
Just who, precisely, is going to grit his teeth, remember that he has a
spine, take the talmudic bull by the proverbial horns and really, REALLY
look at what is going on in this abomination called a "security certificate
hearing"!
- Let me simplify the situation in the Canadian system,
as I understand it: There exist in Canada two sets of parallel courts -
provincial courts and federal courts. On paper, they have equal standing.
On paper, a defendant may choose the court most advantageous to his circumstances
and the facts around his case.
-
- In reality, a victim of the system can be made to spend
huge sums of money, and lose valuable time and energy, getting bounced
from one court system to the other - back and forth, and back and forth
again, ad nauseam!
-
- In Ernst's case, the choice was the provincial court
system for a start. No luck there, as you will remember. The female judge
just washed her hands and said, "wrong court."
-
- Now, normally, we would have regrouped and gone to the
federal court with Ernst's complaint like good little players in a very
evil game. The snag there is that Ernst's case would not have been heard
FOR UP TO FIVE YEARS because of the federal court backlog!
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- In the meantime, our legal costs grind on the notorious
Judge Blais, whose anti-Zundel rulings are so unashamed that they make
even some of the traditionally hard-boiled media mavens cringe.
-
- What to do? The Zundel team decided on a motion to the
Supreme Court of Canada to at least bring the Judge Blais hearings to a
stop - "stay the hearings", as it's called - and thus save costs
and nerves until the SC judges, now on summer holidays, can reconvene and
look at the Blais mess from a national interest and national precedent
point of view.
-
- Zundel motion and government reply motion were filed.
Tradition allows one last reply to the Zundel defense team before the case
is going to be heard.
-
- Below is that reply, filed July 27th. You can deduce
from this reply just what is playing here:
-
- [START]
-
- Please find the Applicant's Reply for Motion for Stay
and Other Relief as follow:
-
- APPLICANT'S REPLY
-
- 1. The Crown's submissions are telling in what is relies
upon and what is omitted.
-
- What the Crown Relies Upon
-
- 2. The Crown's submissions are dominated by procedural
arguments thereof. It is respectfully submitted that there are much more
important substantive issues at stake here, as previously set out in the
Applicant's Memorandum of Argument herein.
-
- 3. The Crown also relies heavily upon a familiar refrain:
that the Applicant is in the wrong court. The Crown did so when the Applicant
brought his constitutional challenge before the designated judge (wrong
court) and before the Ontario Superior Court (wrong court). According to
the Crown, the Applicant should either go through a five year federal court
action and be deported before the action is heard (right court), or he
should go back to the designated judge now, and look forward to the Crown's
steadfast response: WRONG COURT.
-
- 4. It is respectfully submitted that this jurisdictional
ping-pong is unbecoming of the Crown and of any court. It brings the administration
of justice into disrepute by turning it into an exercise of grinding individual
right-seekers into silence.
-
- 5. It is particularly objectionable that the Crown has
answered the Applicant's concern of jurisdictional ping-pong with suggestions
of playing more jurisdictional ping-pong: bounce the Applicant once more
and he will be gone for good, as there are no more courts to which the
Applicant can go.
-
- What the Crown Omits
-
- 6. The Crown's submissions contain no answer to any of
the documentary and transcript evidence in support of the Applicant's motion,
except one, that due to procedural concerns, this Honourable Court should
disregard them.
-
- 7. It is respectfully submitted that the Crown relies
on procedural arguments because it simply has no meritorious rebuttal to
the Applicant's substantive evidence and argument.
-
- 8. It is respectfully submitted that what the Crown has
asked this Honourable Court to do is to choose between enforcing murky
procedure or enforcing substantive justice.
-
- 9. Finally, the Applicant will address two procedural
points raised by the Crown. The first is the Applicant's timing of this
motion. Contrary to the Crown's assertion of this being a last minute motion,
the timing of this motion has been expeditious and has been driven by the
conduct of the security certificate review hearing judge, the Honourable
Justice Blais.
-
- 10. As recently as May 5, 2004, the court and all counsel
scheduled dates for this hearing all the way to December 16, 2004. However,
on June 23, 2004, Justice Blais quashed all of the Applicant's subpoenas
to Applicant's witnesses and unilaterally ordered that this hearing end
by September 14, 2004, making it imperative that this motion be brought
and heard very quickly if the Applicant's appeal and all the issues of
secret trials and fundamental justice raised by it are to be addressed
on their merits.
-
- 11. As this motion relies upon both the Application herein
and Application no. 30427, both Applications had to be completed before
this motion could be brought. Within the four weeks after Justice Blais'
order dated June 23, 2004, this so-called last minute motion was completed
together with Application no. 30427 while Applicant's leading counsel Peter
Lindsay went through serious throat surgery on July 13, 2004. The Application
materials included excerpts from transcripts which by now total in excess
of 4,800 pages. This motion has been forced upon the Applicant by the conduct
of the security certificate review court and has been brought on a timely
manner.
-
- 12. Secondly, as to the Crown's claim that the Applicant
is, again, in the wrong court, the Applicant has made it very clear that
this motion is actually brought under the auspices of both the Application
herein (from the Federal Court of Appeal) and Application no. 30427 (from
the Court of Appeal for Ontario). The Applicant relies on materials from
both Applications to support this motion. It is therefore not an option
to bring the motion to stay before any single appellate court below. Moreover,
the Applicant has also requested the remedies of consolidation and expedition,
which only this Honourable Court can grant.
-
- 13. It is respectfully submitted that in order to defeat
this motion, the Crown ought to have a substantive answer to the atrocious
violation of fundamental rights and values of justice raised by the Applicant
as the basis for this request for stay, and do more than, once again, dodge
the issues.
-
- 14. Our new Foreign Minister lectures Iran that the "government
of Canada continues to insist that justice be done. The process has to
be both transparent and credible...I hope that the Iranian judiciary will
have the courage to act".
-
- 15. It is respectfully submitted that a stay of proceedings
should be granted as well as consolidation and expedition in order to bring
this matter to at least the standard of justice Canada demands of Iran.
-
- ALL OF WHICH IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED.
-
- Date: July 27, 2004
-
-
- _______________________________
-
- Peter Lindsay Chi-Kun Shi
-
- Counsel for the Applicant
-
-
- [END]
-
- Well, guess what? The motion was denied in less than
a day - not only that, Ernst has been assessed costs to reimburse the opposition!
- The motion to stay the hearings was denied by one lone
judge who, Ernst said yesterday, has always been hostile to him. I asked
Ernst what that meant - was this now the end, and did this latest mean
that his choice was to sit out five years in the Canadian Gulag until the
federal court saw fit to hear his case, or be deported as a danger to the
security of Canada on the simple, arbitrary say-so of Judge Blais *before*
the substantive matter can be dealt with properly in the Supreme Court
of Canada?
-
- Ernst said that Judge Blais has had the option of aborting
the trial all along - and he might well decide to do so at this point.
However, two motions pertaining to the constitutional issues are still
pending. Eventually, the Canadian Supreme Court judges will have to come
up with a ruling - in simplest terms, if secret hearings such as Stalin
practiced are okay in Canada where no defense is possible.
- Will this be done while Ernst is still in Canada, or
after he is gone?
- Your guess is as good as my guess. Be prepared for a
few more surprises.
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- NO SURRENDER!
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- Ingrid
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