TORONTO -- Infamous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel ended more than four decades in Canada yesterday when he was deported to Germany and handed to authorities who want to prosecute him for spreading hate. Branded by a Federal Court judge as a risk to national security, Zundel was taken before daybreak from the jail where he had been held in solitary confinement for two years and escorted onto a plane to Frankfurt.

"He has been turned over to German authorities," Alex Swann, spokesman for Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan, told the Canadian Press. "This is a significant step. The process has worked."

Jewish groups were ecstatic.

"For decades, Zundel has spewed his venom and imbued his brand of hate in a new generation of white supremacist groups that had made him a hero," Frank Dimant of B'nai Brith Canada said yesterday.

"We hope that this (deportation) signals a new and tougher approach by Canada to crack down without exception on practitioners of hate."

Zundel had been held under a national security certificate, which allows indefinite detention on secret evidence without charge or trial.

One supporter said Zundel had been subjected to "a kangaroo court."

Although civil libertarians who despised his views also decried the process, Zundel's lawyer Peter Lindsay said yesterday he was "disappointed" they didn't make a bigger fuss.

"There's been an outcry at the last minute when it's too late," said Lindsay.

"Where were the civil libertarians when this has been going on for two years?"

German officials in the city of Mannheim had previously issued a warrant for Zundel's arrest over his U.S.-based website, which spreads his view the Holocaust was an elaborate hoax. It's a crime in Germany to deny the Holocaust occurred or spread Nazi propaganda.

Zundel, 65, immigrated to Canada in 1958. He came to public attention in the 1980s with several publications including The Hitler We Loved and Why, and Did Six Million Really Die?

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