TORONTO (AP) – A white supremacist was deported from Canada on Tuesday and immediately taken into custody by authorities in his native Germany, where he faces charges of denying the Holocaust and inciting hatred via the Internet, immigration officials said.

Ernst Zundel, 65, author of “The Hitler We Loved and Why,” was turned over to German authorities, said Helen Leslie, a spokeswoman for Canadian Border Services Agency in Ottawa. “We are committed to removing people who are found to be a security threat as soon as practical,” she said.

German authorities had said he would be arrested for decades of anti-Semitic activities.

These include his repeated denials of the Holocaust, which is a crime in Germany.

Zundel was arrested by German police at Frankfurt airport and taken to the southwestern city of Mannheim, where he was to spend his first night back in his homeland in police custody, local police spokesman Elmar Ludwig told The Associated Press. His arraignment was set for Wednesday.

Zundel’s attorney, Peter Lindsay, said his client was held in near-solitary confinement for two years while and authorities determined whether he posed a security risk to Canadians.

A Canadian judge ruled last week that Zundel’s activities were not only a threat to national security, but “the international community of nations” as well.

“Zundel’s day of reckoning has finally come,” said Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B’nai Brith Canada. The group had been at the forefront of efforts to have Zundel deported.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group, said Zundel’s likely trial would help to educate younger generations in Europe.

“Let’s give him another 15 minutes of fame, if the trial can expose how Holocaust denial comes about,” said Cooper.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry said Monday that Mannheim prosecutors were able to open a case against Zundel because his Holocaust-denying Web site is available in Germany.

Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials twice rejected his attempts to obtain Canadian citizenship, and he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., until he was deported back to Canada in 2003 for alleged immigration violations.

Since the late 1970s he has operated Samisdat Publishing, one of the leading distributors of Nazi propaganda and, since 1995, has been a key content provider for a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial.

Zundel has claimed he is a peaceful man with no criminal record against him in Canada. Lindsay has challenged the constitutionality of the security certificate review process, saying it violated his client’s right to free speech and association.

A Canadian law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, allows the government to hold terrorism suspects without charge, based on secret evidence that does not have to be disclosed to a suspect or his defense.

Lindsay said he last spoke to his client on Monday.

“He was feeling disillusioned with a legal system that had subjected him to a largely secret trial,” Lindsay said.

Zundel has had a four-decade battle with Canadian authorities. He was convicted of spreading false news in 1985, a conviction that was upheld in an Ontario appeals court in 1988, Lindsay said. The Supreme Court in 1992 struck down the law that had found Zundel guilty, however, calling it a violation of freedom of expression.

“He’s now been deported to a country where he’s going to be prosecuted for something our Supreme Court of Canada has decided is not a crime.”

AP-ES-03-01-05 2042EST

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