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PHOTO: Immigration officers take the handcuffed British writer to the prison van that will take him to Toronto airport
(courtesy Niagara Falls Review)

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COURTESY LINK: Visit the Simon Wiesenthal Center Website.

APPROXIMATELY 150 participants joined the Institute for Historical Review for its “Eleventh International Revisionist Conference” at Irvine, California’s Airporter Inn in October [1992]. Speakers included Ahmed Rami of Sweden (see story page 5); David Irving (see also related stories), who spent much of the conference at a table trying to unload his own books, and discredited gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter, who attributed the demise of his execution equipment and consulting career an organized campaign of intimidation and revenge, and attorney Kirk Lyons, whose Patriot’s Defense Foundation has defended the likes of Jim Wickstrom, founding member of the Posse Comitatus, Thorn Robb, National Director of the KKK and Louis Beam, Ambassador-at-large for the Aryan Nations. Two speakers appeared on video: Wolf Hess, son of the late Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess, and German-Canadian “revisionist,” Ernst Zündel, who was prevented from boarding his flight to the U.S. conference by American officials at the Toronto airport.

Meanwhile, Sol Littman reports from Canada that while David Irving squirmed, bullied and lied, in the end he was booted out of Canada, never to return without the express permission of the Immigration Minister.

The controversial English writer had barely begun his Canadian tour in Victoria B.C. last October when he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the midst of a speech to the Canadian Free Speech League, an organization that promotes free speech for KKK members and Holocaust deniers such as Ernst Zündel and James Keegstra.

Previously, Canada has been a happy hunting ground for Irving. Canadian reporters and book reviewers, dazzled by Irving’s long list of publications and his seeming expertise, praised his books and publicized his public appearances. which were generally sponsored by some of the meanest, longstanding. pro-Nazi antisemitic organizations in Canada.

Alerted through its international contacts that Irving was about to begin his 1992 tour, the Wiesenthal Center was determined to drop Irving in his tracks to prevent him from entering Canada. A legal research team provided the Canadian Department of Immigration with a brief pointing to Irving’s conviction in Germany and arguing that the German law was equivalent to Canada’s laws against the promotion of racial, religious and ethnic hatred.

Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Bernard Valcourt, was readily persuaded. A letter from the Minister advising Irving that he was barred from Canada was hand-delivered to the English writer at a Los Angeles meeting of the Institute for Historical Review in October.

Border posts were alerted and airlines were advised not to give Irving passage. Irving, however, defied the order and made his way to Victoria, arriving several hours before his scheduled address to the Canadian Free Speech League. In mid-speech, however, the RCMP mounted the platform, placed Irving under arrest and dragged him away in handcuffs. 

©Focal Point 1998    write to David Irving