That's what democracy looks like. Theirs won't look like ours. Turkey has restrictions on speech and religion that we as Americans would find onerous, but they've helped maintain the only stable, secular democracy in the Muslim world.
Ernst Zündel is a vile creep. That said, I don't think anyone should be jailed for expressing an opinion. But that said, he knew the law and knowingly broke it. If intentionally breaking an unjust law is an admirable act of civil disobedience, part of that process is taking the punishment.
Ernst Zundel was a publisher in Canada over 30 years ago. He's been retired for years. He paints pictures. When he published the books, it was NOT AGAINST THE LAW IN CANADA... he has never published anything in Germany.
Canada changed its laws several years ago and created the new category of "hate crimes" and included writing things the government did not approve... they used this law to deport a CANADIAN CITIZEN to Germany. Incidentally, Hate crimes such as this are tried before an appointed "Tribunal" and not a jury of one's peers. There is no appeal from the Tribunal's decision.
Recently, some fundamentalist preachers have been hauled before the Canadian Tribunal for quoting the Bible in public.
To paraphrase Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller: "When they came for Ernst Zundel, I didn't say anything because I was not a Holocaust denier..."
It is ironic that the German government should make a civil rights martyr out of the man.