Archive/File: people/z/zundle.ernst/press/zundel-ran-website.971018
Last-Modified: 1997/10/18

Source: The Globe and Mail, October 18, 1997 (A6)

Zundel ran Web site, paid costs, panel told
Sent $3000 a month to U.S., ex-wife says

By Thomas Claridge
The Globe and Mail

TOONTO - The estranged wife of neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst
Zundel testified yesterday that her husband effectively
controlled the operation of an Internet Web site based in
California.

Irene Zundel told a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that
although the site is owned by an Ingrid Rimland of Carlsbad,
Calif., during their marriage Mr. Zundel, 58, sent the woman
$3,000 (U.S.) a month to cover its costs, including between
$400 and $500 a month to the local Internet server.

Advising the three-member tribunal that she separated from
Mr. Zundel last July and is currently seeking a divorce, the
witness said that during the 16-month relationship she
helped her husband by typing "English Power" letters and
other items that ultimately appeared on the Web site.

She said a part-time employee, Marc Lemire, also took
handwritten material submitted by Mr. Zundel, keyed it into
computers and "posted" it to the Web site. "Ingrid didn't
have the knowledge to do it."

However, she conceded that she could not tell which material
on the Web site had originated in Toronto.

Mrs. Zundel told the tribunal that her husband and the site
owner often disagreed on what should appear and Mr. Zundel
wanted to exercise editorial control. "In my opinion, he
didn't trust her political judgment."

The hearing was ordered after the commission received
complaints from Sabina Citron and Toronto's committee on
community and race relations, who say the site denies that
millions of Jews were killed by Nazis during the Second
World War.

The tribunal has been asked to rule whether Mr. Zundel is
responsible for disseminating hate material on the Web site
and to consider whether the Internet is a "telephonic
communication" that can be regulated by Parliament. If both
questions are answered affirmatively, the tribunal could
issue a cease-and-desist order enforceable by the Federal
Court of Canada.

Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, under which
the complaints were made, was designed to prevent hate
messages from being transmitted by telephone-answering
machines.

Mr. Zundel's lawyer, Douglas Christie, is expected to cross-
examine the witness when the hearing resumes on Dec. 11.

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