Canada doesn't extradite people who break laws that Canada doesn't recognize. Hell, I think Canada has in the past refused to extradite someone to a death penalty nation, unless guarantees where made that the death penalty wouldn't be used.
However, it looks like Canada decided that he isn't a Canadian citizen. Probably because he lied on his citizenship application.
So, Canada are supposed to deport him, to the nation which he is a Citizen of, namely Germany. This isn't extraditing him, it is quite different.
Given the fact he is likely to flee rather than return to Germany, he was detained to prevent flight (together with the security problem). Canada doesn't want illegal immigrants who lie about their past wandering around.
At which point, Canada is sending someone to a country where he will be prosecuted for a crime that is not a crime in Canada. Hence the refugee arguement, which may or may not fly.
Inciting hatred against an ethnic group is illegal in Canada. This was probably what he was charged with.
Canada doesn't have an inalienable freedom of speach. In fact, the one completely inalienable Canadian right is the right to vote: most other rights can be taken away in extremis, and others simply by using particular language.
One may note that the ability for the establishment to disenfranchise their opponents was instrumental in Bush becoming president. (error-filled "this person cannot vote" lists where used in Flordia, resulting in a non-trivial number of people who should have been able to vote, even under American law, being refused their rights.)
The war on drugs, together with other crimes, has resulted in a non-trivial percentage of the black underclass of the southern states being unable to vote.
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As noted by the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, and Human Rights Watch, over 4.2 million Americans were prohibited from voting in the 2000 presidential election, because they were in prison or had in the past been convicted of a felony. Of that number, more than one-third, or 1.8 million voters who are disenfranchised, are African Americans. This represents 13 percent of all black males of voting age in the U.S.
In Florida and Alabama, 31 percent of all black men as of 1998 were permanently disenfranchised because of felony convictions, many for nonviolent crimes. In New Mexico and Iowa, one in every four African-American males is permanently disenfranchised. In Texas, one in five black men are not allowed to vote.
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(from
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/conte.../08marable.htm -- I've seen similar numbers elsewhere. Possibly these numbers are wrong, I haven't verified them)
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Fifty-five percent of all Class A drug felons have no prior criminal convictions of any kind.
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Quote:
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In 1980, nine percent of those incarcerated were drug felons; now drug felons comprise 34 percent of the prison population. The increase is more staggering for women where 60.4 percent of the women currently in prison were sentenced for drug crimes. Over 70 percent of these men and women have never been convicted of a violent felony.
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Quote:
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While African Americans and Latinos comprise 32.3 percent of New York's population, they comprise 94.3 percent of those currently incarcerated for drug felonies, even though drug selling and use are reportedly almost proportionate between races.
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(
http://www.drugpolicy.org/statebysta...lerd/index.cfm )
So, high and mighty "America is the land of the free", it is only free if you aren't being targetted by the latest wave of the American Prohibition-fetish.