- It isn't often that the accused catches the cop, but
Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel managed the feat yesterday.
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- After a three-month legal chase, Mr. Zundel finally cornered
an elusive ex-security services agent -- John Farrell -- long enough to
subpoena him to Mr. Zundel's deportation hearing.
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- Mr. Zundel and his defence team believe the former Canadian
Security Intelligence Service agent has vital information about a purported
CSIS campaign against Mr. Zundel. They intend to question him about allegations
that CSIS was aware that Mr. Zundel was the target of a bomb plot in the
1980s, but that the agency purposely failed to warn him.
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- However, first, they had to get close enough to Mr. Farrell
to serve a subpoena.
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- At the height of their cat-and-mouse game last spring,
a principal at a Toronto elementary school where Mr. Farrell now teaches
allegedly grabbed defence lawyer Peter Lindsay in a bear hug as Mr. Farrell
disappeared out a side door.
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- According to court documents, the Toronto Catholic District
School Board later supplied a phone number and address for Mr. Farrell.
However, the phone number was out of service and the address turned out
to be a strip mall.
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- In late July, Mr. Justice Pierre Blais of the Federal
Court of Canada issued a special "order for substitute service,"
permitting the school board itself to serve the subpoena on Mr. Farrell.
When he showed up last week, it did so.
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- Judge Blais was taking no chances yesterday when Mr.
Farrell appeared in court. After asking the ex-agent to identify himself,
Judge Blais said: "The order of this court is that you shall stay
until the disposition [of the legal motion to compel him to testify]."
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- The government is seeking to deport Mr. Zundel using
a rarely used security certificate. It alleges that his Holocaust-denial
activities in the past 30 years have inspired violent terrorists. Under
the legal procedure, details of the CSIS allegations are withheld from
Mr. Zundel's defence team.
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- In an attempt to batter CSIS's credibility, Mr. Lindsay
has made much of a recent exposé of the agency -- Covert Entry --
written by journalist Andrew Mitrovica. In writing his book, Mr. Mitrovica
relied heavily on information from Mr. Farrell.
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- The book includes passages that describe a powerful pipe
bomb delivered to Mr. Zundel during a period when CSIS was methodically
intercepting his mail. Suspicious, Mr. Zundel took it to the police, who
detonated the explosive and reported that it could easily have killed him.
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- "Farrell is convinced that the package containing
the pipe bomb delivered to Zundel's home was intercepted either by himself
or Pilotte [another agent]," the book said. "This raises the
possibility that the intelligence service was aware of the package's potentially
lethal cargo before Zundel received it."
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- Mr. Farrell's lawyer -- John Norris -- argued yesterday
that his client should not be compelled to testify because he has no "material"
evidence to contribute to the hearing. Mr. Norris said any conclusions
drawn in the excerpt are those of Mr. Mitrovica, not Mr. Farrell.
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- However, Judge Blais was cool to his arguments. Not only
is the pipe-bomb issue material to the case, he said, but it is a very
grave allegation that needs to be illuminated.
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- Judge Blais also gave short shrift to Mr. Norris's concerns
about Mr. Farrell being forced to incriminate himself or break the Canada
Evidence Act by revealing classified information. Mr. Farrell "opened
the barn door" by collaborating with Mr. Mitrovica, Judge Blais observed.
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- Arguments over whether to quash Mr. Farrell's subpoena
continue tomorrow.
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