Omar's crib . . .

IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF that nobody has asked our candidates about getting Omar out of Gitmo. Last week, Wikileaks released the operating manual for Omar's world, and according to Ryan Singel at WIRED, it's not pretty, organized by the same gang who set up Abu Ghraib:

The manual also includes instructions on how to use military dogs to intimidate prisoners.

"MWD (Military Working Dogs) will walk 'Main Street' in Camp Delta during shifts to demonstrate physical presence to detainees," reads a directive in the "Psychological Deterrence" section. "MWD will not be walked through the blocks unless directed by the (Joint Detention Operations Group)."

The document was signed by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. According to media reports, Miller introduced harsh interrogation methods to Guantánamo, such as shackling detainees into stress positions and using guard dogs to exploit what the former head commander in Iraq Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez referred to as "Arab fear of dogs."

Miller visited Iraq in 2003 to share the Guantánamo methods. Soon after that visit, the infamous Abu Ghraib photos were taken.

Harper sends in the lightweights

If you haven't listened to CBC's The Current today it's well worth the time if only to realize that Barry Cooper, one of the Calgary School feeding Harper-government policy, is still peddling a line which flies in the face of rule of law, shows a distinct lack of respect for established convention and thinks people are worth wasting in the name of, what he described as, "foreign policy".

It doesn't matter what you think of Omar Khadr or his family. The question put before the Federal Court of Canada was, "Did Canada participate in the violation of rights of the individual as protected by the Charter of Human Rights and the Constitution of Canada?"

The court said "Yes," to that question and, for the sixth time, ordered the Government of Canada to present a plan to remedy the violation in which Canada actively participated.

When questioned about the Federal Court decision on today's The Current, Cooper, dismissed rule of law and tried to make it a foreign policy issue in which he says the courts have no jurisdiction. That would be egregious enough, but then he played his Karl Rove by stating that Justice Russell W. Zinn, the Federal Court judge who issued the order and the deadline, was an activist judge who should keep his opinions to himself.

Really?

Either Cooper thought he could pull one over on the listeners or he simply wasn't prepared to be speaking in such a public place because Nathalie Des Rosiers of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association nuked him on the spot.

Justice Russell W. Zinn was appointed to the Federal Court on 20 February, 2008 - by Stephen Harper.

Throughout the rest of the piece Cooper did little more than duck and weave in an attempt to turn a legal matter into something it isn't.

Listen to the whole thing. It's really worth listening to Cooper make himself irrelevant.

Canadian reporters banned from Gitmo

Skdadl reports that Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest, Paul Koring of the Globe & Mail, and Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald have been banned by the US Dept. of Defense from covering any future trials at Gitmo because they divulged the names of two interrogator/witnesses at Omar Khadr's kangaroo pretrial.

Well it's a wee bit late for that, isn't it? Michelle Shephard already published the names and part of an interview with one of those witnesses in The Star nearly two years ago :

"Sgt. Joshua Claus was a slight, blond soldier with little experience and lots of responsibility when he became Khadr's interrogator in the cavernous U.S. prison in Bagram detainees nicknamed "The Barn."

Claus would later be convicted for his role in the death of another detainee at Bagram – an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Claus pleaded guilty to maltreatment and assault in return for a five-month jail sentence in 2005.

During the only interview Claus has granted, he told the Toronto Star any allegations of Khadr's mistreatment were false. "They're trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to," Claus said.

This ban means that the very reporters who've been providing such excellent coverage on Omar Khadr for years - Shephard has written a book on it - will not be able to report on his show trial when it finally gets underway.

Skdadl's source at Empty Wheel sums it up :

"So DOD is basically saying that once a reporter agrees to go to Gitmo, they lose the ability to report on stuff they have already reported on."

A week ago the military judge ordered reporters and spectators out of this same Gitmo courtroom while 'classified' video of an interview with Khadr was shown. The reporters adjourned to the media room and watched it on youtube instead.

Omar Khadr's show trial

Skdadl reminds us that Harper sent a wee tepid request to the US government asking that the Khadr kangaroo show trial :

"not use as evidence in legal proceedings there any evidence collected at GTMO by Canadian agents and representatives, which the Supreme Court of Canada has said (2008) was collected in violation of Omar Khadr's rights."

Steve to Obama : nudge, nudge, wink, wink
What to do ... what to do...

McClatchy :

"Earlier Saturday, officers cleared reporters and observers from the hearing to screen a 2003 interrogation video that they said was classified, though it was made public by Canada's Supreme Court two years ago and is available on YouTube.

The video shows the Toronto-born teen weeping in a Guantanamo interrogation booth and pleading for help from his Canadian interrogator.

Reporters locked out of that portion of the hearing watched the video on YouTube in a media center in a crude abandoned airport hangar below the hilltop tribunal chamber."

The other bizarre incident of the day was testimony from the Army Special Forces officer, an assistant police chief in civilian life, who initially reported that the person who threw the grenade at Army Sgt Speer died in the firefight. This is the crime Khadr is charged with; if the grenade thrower died, then it wasn't Khadr.

Defense lawyers discovered this report had later been altered to say that Khadr may have survived - what they termed "manufactured evidence" - but that turns out to have been just an honest mistake :

"W said he didn't realize that he got the report wrong until some investigators preparing for Khadr's trial visited him “a few years later.” So he opened it up on his computer and fixed it."

A few years later. Even though, according to Paul Koring , "he had known within days of the original firefight that Mr. Khadr had survived. "

Well alrighty then. It seems to me there have been hundreds if not thousands of people 'not in uniform' in Afghanistan who could be charged with throwing grenades at the US troops occupying their country. Where's their show trials?

Re-match

THE GLOBE HAS AN INTERESTING TAKE on the Supreme Court's decision, and Stevie isn't gonna like it . . . according to Kirk Makin,

In an 9-0 ruling this morning, the Court said that Canada violated Mr. Khadr's Charter rights by participating in illegal interrogation methods which included sleep deprivation.

It stressed that the constitutional breach is ongoing and “continues to this day.”

However, the court said that before stepping in to dictate a Canadian response on a sensitive question of foreign policy, the federal government must be given a chance to rectify Mr. Khadr's plight.

But should the government fail to act, the court warned that it has the power to move more overtly to aid Mr. Khadr.

It's not easy, being Stevie.

Child detainee going home after four years in Gitmo

A child detained in Guantanamo Bay for seven years for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at US soldiers in Afghanistan when he was 14 years old is on his way home after a US Federal Court ruled the government was holding him illegally. His initial confession, obtained under duress, was thrown out by the judge.
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"We are so pleased that this nightmare of abuse and injustice has finally come to an end," said his attorney. "While he can never get back the nearly seven years he was illegally detained and tortured, now he can finally return home to his family, friends and country, and begin to build a normal life."
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The child detainee in question is Mohammed Jawad, now returned to his native Afghanistan thanks to a US Federal Court decision this month. [Yeah, mean trick, I know]
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Gosh, another kid accused of throwing a grenade. Is the US military generally in the habit of accusing the survivors of their raids of throwing grenades, or only when there are US casualties and the possibility of friendly fire?
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Meanwhile back in Canada, our child soldier detained in Guantanamo for seven years for allegedly throwing a grenade at US soldiers in Afghanistan when he was 15 - that's Omar Khadr pictured above in the middle the year before his father dumped him in Afghanistan - has not been so lucky because Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the last leader on the planet Earth to support the detaining and abuse of children in Gitmo.
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On August 14, our Federal Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that Ottawa is required to press the US for Khadr's repatriation because CSIS and Department of Foreign Affairs officials had violated his Charter rights by being complicit in his mistreatment at Gitmo.
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Yesterday Harper's federal government disgraced itself by announcing it will go to the Supreme Court in a bid to overturn that ruling.
They do not want to risk asking the US for Khadr's return, perhaps because the Obama Administration urged a federal judge to order the release of Mohammed Jawad, and even George W. Bush granted requests by other countries for the repatriation of their citizens from Gitmo.
Harper is going to the wall in hopes that a sufficient number of Canadians believe in tiered citizenship and a four-tiered passport system and will applaud his stand against so-called 'activist' judges. He's wrong about that.

"Then they were heroes. They were heroes."

Another brown Canadian citizen has been held in the US for 5½ years, 4 of them in solitary confinement, for "allegedly assisting al-Qaeda", and his lawyer worries that like Omar Khadr and Abousfian Abdelrazik he will be denied the necessary travel documents to return to Canada by Ottawa.

CBC : Ottawa not saying if Canadian linked to al-Qaeda can return

"Last month, U.S. federal prosecutors offered to drop the five charges of material terrorism if Warsame pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to support al-Qaeda."

Mohammed Warsame has accepted the offer - and after four years in solitary in the US, so would I - but Warsame does not deny his association with al-Qaeda.
In 2000, he left Toronto for Afghanistan to train with al-Quaeda. Disillusioned by what he found there, he returned to Canada in March 2001 - six months before 9/11 - and was picked up by the FBI in Minneapolis in 2003. He has been held in custody without trial ever since.
As his lawyer explained: "Like many young Muslims, he was attracted by the notion of an Islamic state he believed was a sort of utopia."


Reading this I was reminded of a Chris Sands interview with the wife of an American diplomat stationed in Kabul. She spoke of her husband accompanying the Afghan resistance on their missions across the border against Soviet troops and of her friendship with fundamentalist Mujahideen leaders.
"Then they were heroes. They were heroes," she said.
Yes. They were portrayed as herioic, we now know, for their usefulness in embroiling the Soviet Union in a crippling unwinnable war. "Freedom fighters", Reagan called them.
But what is not often mentioned is the effect all that hero worship and propaganda in the western press would have had upon young Muslim teenagers in Canada and the US.

Warsame's crime was to have believed it.

Cross-posted at Creekside.

I may move back just to vote against these jerks

As a Canadian who has lived outside of Canada for a dozen years (and yes Mom, we are coming back eventually, honest) this kind of headline turns my blood to frozen concrete.

Ottawa says it has no duty to protect Canadians outside country

A lot has been done to help Khadr in Guantanamo: Justice Department

By JANICE TIBBETTS, Canwest News
ServiceJune 3, 2009

Canada's legal duty to protect its citizens, even children, ends at the border and there is nothing in domestic or international law that obliges the government to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation, say federal arguments filed in court.
The government contends it has done plenty to ensure the "well-being" of the Guantanamo Bay detainee - from supplying him with magazines to ensuring he receives medical treatment and facilitating contact with his family - and any further protection is at the discretion of the state, not the courts.

This is not happy-making news for all us expats, especially those of us who live in countries where "the usual suspects" means anybody foreign.
This could mean I am one misunderstanding away from life imprisonment since the government of Canada doesn't feel that they have any duty to assist me in any way should the police pick me up and imprison me for any reason at all.
And that does happen in a lot of countries. Police in Tokyo routinely stop foreigners riding bicycles to confirm the bike isn't stolen. Bikes here are supposed to be registered and usually carry a sticker with the owner's name - and if your bike happens to be registered in your Japanese wife's name, well, welcome to jail in Japan, where you don't have a right to a lawyer during police interrogation and are not even officially presumed innocent. This hasn't happened to me, but it does happen.
And that's in Japan, a nice civilized G8 country. Anyone care to try their luck in Central America or Africa or Saudi Arabia without any assistance from "Canada's New Government"?

The Banana Republic of Canada

In the wake of the O'Connor and Iacobucci public inquiries into the role CSIS played in the torture of Canadians overseas, a new government rulebook of guidelines was issued to CSIS and various blandishments were offered by the ministers in charge.

What's in the new rulebook?
Pogge blogged a couple of days ago about a copy obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act that is so heavily censored it is impossible to tell whether the new guidelines adequately address the recommendations laid out by O'Connor and Iacobucci to prevent future torture such as that visited upon Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin. As Pogge wrote :

"When representatives of government and its agencies assure us that they're playing by the rules, it's a little difficult to judge the accuracy of their claims when we're not allowed to know what those rules are."

This was also the position our elected representatives on the Committee on Public Safety and National Security found themselves in back in March during its Review of the Findings and Recommendations of the Iacobucci and O'Connor Reports. Despite persistent straightforward questions from the Liberals and Bloc members - Do we condone torture? Do we still use information derived from torture? - the dodging and weaving from CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian left these questions largely unanswered.
A brief media flurry resulted from his opening statement that there is no absolute ban on the use of information derived from torture when "lives are at stake", but this was immediately laid to rest the next day when the word "knowingly" was added by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan", as in "we don't knowingly use info extracted by torture". It's the new Don't ask, Don't tell Intel.

As O'Brian explained to the committee : "Three individuals are suing the government for several hundred million dollars, therefore we cannot discuss anything that would indicate that the government is in agreement with Iacobucci's findings."

He is aided in this avoidance of accountability by the six Con members on the committee running interference on tough questions from the Libs and the Bloc. From my notes of that session -not exact quotes :
Maria Mourani, Bloc : I'd like to ask about our questioning of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo ...
Dave MacKenzie, Con : Point of order : what's the relevance?
Mourani : Khadr was tortured and Canadians paid CSIS to contribute.
Chair Garry Breitkreuz, Con : I don't understand the relevance.
Mourani : I want to know did CSIS use information from Khadr obtained under torture?MacKenzie : Point of order - Mourani is on a fishing trip.

I'll just give you a moment to let that one sink in.

Mourani : I'll rephrase the question : Is information obtained under torture?
Chair, Breitkreuz : Witnesses cannot comment on individual cases.
Mark Holland, Lib : But the questiuon is central to this inquiry.
Rathgeber, Con : Point of order. Not relevant. Stick to Iacobucci and O'Connor reports.

Which, you will recall, O'Brian has already said cannot be commented on due to ongoing litigation.

Menard, Bloc : Mourani is right. This is central to the O'Connor and Iacobucci reports. What we want to know is: Is torture still endorsed?
Mourani : Answer my question.
O'Brian, eventually : "I reject the premise of the question"

And thus CSIS informs elected members of parliament - the peoples' representatives - sitting on a committee whose mandate is to provide public oversight on intelligence agencies - to stuff it.


A couple of years ago I was sitting in a bar in the States discussing politics with some university students. "How are things up there after the coup?" one of them asked.
Me : *blink* *blink*
"Perhaps you don't call it a coup," said another helpfully.
We not only don't call it a coup, we don't even ever refer to it.
In 2006 as Liberal PM Paul Martin seemed almost certain to be re-elected, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli went very public with a criminal investigation into rumoured Liberal government political malfeasance around Income Tax leaks and that was the end of the Libs. Nothing came of the investigation save one lone Finance civil servant pocketing some loot. No inquiry was ever launched into why the head of the national police force, himself later disgraced over Arar, in effect threw the outcome of a national election.

Can individual rogue members of that national police force be brought to justice? Apparently not.
And exactly which intelligence agencies are responsible for the continued incarceration of Omar Khadr and the ongoing banishment of Abousfian Abdelrazik? Well we don't really know.

What we do know is that we have lost public oversight over our police and intelligence agencies. Isn't this the kind of thing we used to sneer at "banana republics" for?

Cross-posted at Creekside

CSIS agents secretly interrogated Abdelrazik

in a Sudanese prison in October of 2003 after he was jailed "at the request of mysterious 'Canadian' authorities", newly released government documents show.

A February 2008 Foreign Affairs briefing note to Maxime Bernier confirms :

"We were not informed of his arrest until November 2003, when Sudanese authorities advised us he was detained at the request of the government of Canada (please see attached memo for more detail)."

Unfortunately we don't know which mysterious Canadian authority because that attached eight page memo obtained by NDP MP Paul Dewar has "every single word, including the page numbers, blacked out."

Not us, says CSIS, insisting CSIS "does not, and has not, arranged for the arrest of Canadian citizens overseas."

So how did you know he was there then? Paul Koring at the G&M reasonably asks - especially as Foreign Affairs claims not to have known he'd been arrested until a month later in November.

Later today Dewar will attempt to force a motion asking for Abdelrazik to be brought before the foreign affairs committee. The motion will fail because the Cons have shown they will go to extraordinary lengths to keep him from coming home, presumably at least in part to protect "mysterious Canadian authorities".

5pm Update : In comments, Skdadl and Frank point out that my link to Koring's G&M article is a rewrite from last night's original, which contained these two now missing additional paragraphs :

"Although the most recently obtained documents confirm another glaring discrepancy in the claims made by various government agencies involved with Mr. Abdelrazik, a review of thousands of pages of document in The Globe's possession shows that not everyone in the Foreign Affairs ministry was unaware of Mr. Abdelrazik's imprisonment.

In an Oct., 16, 2003, e-mail marked “secret,” officials of the intelligence unit of Foreign Affairs note that CSIS agents will pass on details of their then just-completed interrogation of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo and planned to “send two officers to Sudan next week to interview Abdelrazik.” "

Skdadl is reminded of Arar. Yes.

In 2002 at Bagram prison, a 15 year old Omar Khadr was shown photographs of Arar.

On January 2009 at a military commission hearing in Guantanamo Bay: "[FBI]special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar."

He looked familiar. On such evidence hangs the lives of men.

This is just getting stupid

First, go read POGGE.

Get it? Omar Khadr was engaged in a combat action against another soldier. The PMO talking point, copied from the Bush administration, which is now nothing more than sewage, that Omar Khadr intentionally killed an individual with Geneva Convention credentials which protected him is an outright lie.

Those who repeat it are liars. Worse, is that they know they are lying.

Secondly, there is no conclusive evidence, (in fact there is evidence to the contrary), that Khadr actually threw the grenade which killed Sgt 1st Class Spears.

Thirdly, the United States had invaded Afghanistan, with full justification, and was now a belligerent party in a war. On the day, at the time and, at the moment that Khadr allegedly threw a grenade which killed Sgt 1st Class Spears neither party had surrendered. Since Spears was not wearing the appropriate insignia nor acting specifically in a manner to enjoy protection under the Convention, he would be deemed to have been a hostile combatant.

Fourthly, since it was a battlefield, under the Convention, murder is extremely difficult to prove, if not impossible. One combatant killing another in combat is not murder. Both have the same hostile intent unless one side has clearly and unequivocally shown and demonstrated the act of surrender. An enemy which has been defeated in the field but which does not purposely give themselves into the hands of the enemy, without arms, remains a hostile enemy. It doesn't matter if the winning side thinks it's over. They haven't won until the vanquished declare themselves the loser by accepting their own surrender and then displaying recognized symbols to communicate their acceptance of defeat.

That never happened.

Omar Khadr, when captured, was a child soldier. It doesn't matter how he came to be there. It matters that he was one. His age today is irrelevant. At the time of his capture he was under 18. Additionaly, he was governed by his father who he was expected to obey.

Sixth, this is the tough stuff. Nothing is simple when it comes to repatriating a Canadian accused of a heinous crime. But you wanted power and now you're afraid to use the sovereignty of this country for fear of pissing off a regime which was as close to Hitler's Germany as we have ever come.

But we elect governments to handle the tough stuff. Instead, we have posse of clowns who shun the most difficult of issues in order to appease a US administration which no longer exists.

And to keep the racist, mouth-breathing morons which constitute their political base marginally happy between assaults on 24s of cheap beer.

The worst part is the part you have not yet gathered in.

The government of the United States of America has told the government of Canada that they are willing to release Omar Khadr to Canadian custody on Canadian soil. All that has to happen is that the Canadian government officially request repatriation. That's the only condition.

Think I'm making that up? Then ask them. I know it's a fact. The US, as a matter of saving face in four different directions, wants to rid themselves of Omar Khadr but they need to do it under the proper optics. All that needs to be done is to have the Harper government make a public request. No back-channels.

Think I'm wrong?

Ask them. Ask them, if the Canadian government made a formal request to the government of the United States for the repatriation of Omar Khadr would he be returned to his country of birth?

Because if that happened Khadr would be on his way to Canada, in custody, but at least where the rule of law still has some meaning.

So, why won' Lawrence Cannon do that?

Because the "conservative" voting base would go ape-shit.

And the Harper government doesn't do tough stuff. They're a pack of fluff merchants, racist to boot, and would rather fill their "pending" baskets instead of clearing their "out" trays.

I don't like Khadr anymore than the next person, but he's Canadian and should be dealt with here.

That's the tough stuff and it's something the Authoritarians in the Harper government have never been able to handle.

Cowards.

Philosophy gap

As Steve V points out, the Conservative war room might want to figure out how they're going to run damage control on this one. (Emphasis mine)

Canadians would be unwise to follow the Conservative plan for harsher jail sentences, up to life imprisonment, for young offenders, warns the retired judge who shone a spotlight on the flawed youth justice system.

Merlin Nunn issued a landmark report on youth justice two years ago that Stephen Harper claims supports "many" of the Conservatives' newly unveiled proposals to toughen the youth justice law.

But the former Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice took issue with the Tory proposal to boost jail sentences for young offenders, including ratcheting up the maximum youth sentence for murder from 10 years to life in prison, and up to 14 years for other violent offences.

"They have gone beyond what I did, and beyond the philosophy that I accepted," Judge Nunn told The Lawyers Weekly in an interview.

"I don't think it's wise," he added, speculating "it might be politically appealing to people who say 'these kids should all be in jail'."

This is the same Judge Merlin Nunn to whom Harper is constantly referring when telling everyone that his "tough on kids crime" is the result of a study.

Except that the philosophy is completely different. Judge Nunn expanded with this:

But Judge Nunn says he disagrees with the Conservative plan to scrap the existing law for more severe sentences and more jail time. Such a move would fly in the face of expert testimony at his commission of inquiry that punitive sentences don't deter crime, he said.

"Sentencing the child to a longer term just takes away a lot of the opportunity to rehabilitate the young kids," he explained. "There is no proof that long sentences are going to do anything except sometimes make things worse because the young kid sentenced to a longer term in prison, (to be served partially as an adult) in an adult prison, is going to come out. And he may very well be a lot worse than he was when he went in."

Judge Nunn defended the present law's focus on rehabilitation. And for the small number of youths in Canada who commit murder, the Youth Criminal Justice Act already allows prosecutors to ask for adult sentences of life imprisonment. If such offenders are sentenced as youths, their sentences top out at 10 years.

"The young offenders' law in Canada is a very good law -- Canada is miles ahead of most jurisdictions," he insisted. "The reason why I say it's good is that probably 96 or 97 per cent of the kids that get in trouble with the law, don't ever get in trouble again."

And there it is....

The complete philosophical disconnect that should answer at least one question: "Why is the Harper government not pursuing repatriation of Omar Khadr?"

It doesn't matter that whatever happened in that compound on 27 July, 2002 was actually a combat action where defining "murder" would be extremely difficult, particularly since American troops were firing small arms and throwing grenades. It doesn't matter that eyewitness reports of the combat action of 27 July, 2002 are wildly contradictory. It doesn't matter that Omar Khadr's family is a blight on Canada. It doesn't matter that the US military investigation into the combat action of 27 July, 2002 has been reviewed more than once to clarify facts and reconcile witness contradictions.

It does matter that Omar Khadr was an illegally procured child-soldier and any involvement on his part was the result of influence by adults. It does matter that Canada had already signed the UN Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict on 12 February, 2002 with the only reservation being applied to Canadian Armed Forces voluntary recruitment at age 16 with parental consent. It does matter that Omar Khadr, while not absolved of his actions, is entitled under international agreements to rehabilitation and exemption from the actions of a military tribunal. It matters that Omar Khadr was fifteen years of age when he allegedly threw a grenade in a combat action.

But not to the Harper crowd.

Harper's mangling of Merlin Nunn's recommendations to suit his own ideology is a testimony to Conservative dogma. Pure bloody-mindedness.

It's how they prove they're big and tough. They hate anything that isn't them. And they don't do difficult. Everything has to be black and white and if you're a kid going off the rails, the only solution the Conservatives offer is jail.

If you're a kid sucked into some whacked-out religious group of militants that the Harperites don't like, you can rot in jail, forever. It makes them feel strong. It shows everyone that they are mean.

It makes you wonder what they want to do when a baby pukes on their shoulders.

CSIS issues a clarification

- Hey, it wasn't us who conducted interviews with a sleep-deprived Omar Khadr.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service - 2003 Interviews with Omar Khadr - Media Coverage
Ottawa, July 21st, 2008

"Information relating to interviews of Omar Khadr by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service CSIS and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) were recently released to Mr. Khadr’s legal counsel, following rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada in May 2008, and by the Federal Court of Canada in June 2008.

Following the public release of this information by Mr. Khadr’s lawyers, there has been much national and international media coverage pertaining to these interviews. Much of this coverage has focussed on video footage of Service interviews conducted with Mr. Khadr in February 2003.

Mr. Khadr was questioned by CSIS in 2003 about individuals - including those linked to the Al Qaeda organization - who may pose a threat to the security of Canada and its interests. CSIS interviewed Mr. Khadr to collect threat-related information and intelligence and did not discuss consular issues with him, as this is not CSIS's role.

During the recent media coverage of this issue, some factual errors have been reported by certain media outlets. Specifically, select media outlets have claimed that Mr. Khadr had been mistreated by U.S. authorities - including via sleep deprivation - prior to those 2003 interviews with CSIS. This is simply not accurate. In fact, it should be clear that CSIS had no information to substantiate claims that Mr. Khadr was being mistreated by U.S. authorities in conjunction with the CSIS interviews in 2003.

Furthermore, the allegations which subsequently surfaced regarding sleep deprivation were in relation to a 2004 interview in Guantanamo Bay with Mr. Khadr, an interview in which CSIS was not a participant."

Over to you, DFAIT.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Logic, the Blogging Tories and Omar Khadr

A busy weekend this side of the pond and I was at a bit of a loss for material for a blog post --once again it is JimDandy to the rescue as David lights the fuse on the bomb of Teh Stoopid that is the Blogging Tories and their maximum supremo numero uno Stephen Taylor.

Taylor says:

As a conservative, I have for the most part found intellectual solace in logic on issue tracks where my bleeding-heart friends usually hug the emotional left rail. The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. I have always believed that right-wingers act upon what they know to be true, whereas left-wingers act upon what they feel to be true.

Logical?

The conservative movement?

Surely, you jest!

We are talking here about the same people whose shrieking hysteria about gay marriage is based on nothing any more well-considered than "My pastor said teh gays make baby Jebus cry," a deepseated prejudice that "homos are icky" and that if two lesbians want their relationship legally recognized by the state and a wedding at the Unitarian Church, it somehow means that their own marital bliss is endangered and that the Catholic Church will be forced to host gay weddings resembling drag queen festivals.

The same people who think that their religious tomfoolery belongs in biology classes.

The same people who think that just because a handful of cranks and crackpots publish some crap on a blog or self-publish a book denying global warming, their arguments are of equal weight to those made by the overwhelming majority of scientists in peer-reviewed journals.

Need I go on?

These paragons of logic are the same people who want to cut taxes while the country is involved in a costly war with no real end in sight and while the government still has a massive debt to pay off.

These are the guys who, in every election, tell a few gory anecdotes to scare the rubes and promise "to get tough on crime and fight the rising tide of lawlessness" despite the fact that the crime rate has gone down more or less continuously since the 1970s.

These sensible and reasonable people are the ones who seem to see Islamofascistcommie terrorists under the bed and are suspicious of anyone slightly brownish.

The same chuckleheaded Leave-It-to-Beaver wannabes that think because their next door neighbor eats curry or pad Thai instead of pot roast on Sunday, and the bank teller has an unfamiliar accent, that multiculturalism is ruining the country.

The conservatives in Canada, as in most countries are all about emotions: Fear of the new and foreign and grief for the old and familiar.

To parse Taylor's egregious overstatements more closely, let us look at this gem:

"The broad-arching free markets help rise more people out of poverty than knee-jerk social and emotional reaction to give hand-outs to sustain a substandard of living is but one example where cold right-wing logic is a better and more constructive end that short-sighted albeit well-meaning emotionalism. "

Yes, because as we all know providing people who have no food and no money with the means to stay alive is really just cruel. Those knee-jerk social and emotional reactionaries at Unicef and the World Food Program are just prolonging misery in the third world. Don't those starving kids know that big corporations have every right to own the DNA patterns of corn seed? Don't those people with AIDS in Africa know that drug companies need to make a bigger profit than last year and can't just sell drugs at slightly above cost to the needy? Better to let them starve, sicken and die and be done with it and let the magic hand of the market take care of things. You know, the same markets that kept coal miners on starvation wages until they died of black lung in North America before they were unionized and the evil well-meaning emotionalist do-gooders managed to get things like child-labor and workplace-safety laws passed.

Conservatives who seem to think the Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation is the first and last word on the beauty of laissez-faire capitalism would do well to remember that before he wrote it, Smith authored The Theory of Moral Sentiments. While Smith was a dour, persnickity Scots academic who prized independence, prudence and propriety, and by today's standards a bit of a prude, his theory of morals was based on sympathy and benevolence was ranked among the most valued virtues.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Stephen's original post deals with how Omar Khadr, the notorious teenage threat to western civilization who has now spent a third of his life in Guantanamo Bay must not be allowed back into the country. About how the Prime Minister should not intervene and bring him back to Canada, because he faces very serious charges and we just don't repatriate Canadians who fall afoul of the law in foreign countries.

Taylor:

"But, let’s go to first principles. Omar Khadr doesn’t himself deserve to be released from jihadi limbo at Gitmo and tried before an American court."

How about the first principle of "innocent until proven guilty" or the right to habeas corpus and a timely trial?

However, as individuals who are defending a society based upon key values such as due process, presumption of innocence, and the rule of law, we deserve it.

And so does young Mr. Khadr. We all deserve due procress - equality in the eyes of the law and all that, you know. Small problem though, Stephen, due process should have kicked in when he was captured as a child of 14 -- five years ago, but the United States government decided that the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and just didn't apply to them and that they could just make up the rules as they went along. Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan that killed an American soldier. While it is all a bit murky whether he actually did so, I would expect anyone big enough to heft a grenade or a rifle could probably be reasonably expected to do so if the place they were staying, which is alleged to be an Al-Qaida base, was suddenly overrun by foreign troops. The American soldiers in question were, after all, shooting at Khadr. I think self-defense could certainly be argued as could his being a valid, if underage, prisoner of war. If killing enemy combatants on the battlefield is murder, he could be judge guilty of that, but I think calling it a war crime is stretching the definition a bit.

Khadr’s present threat does not manifest itself in his illiberal hatred of our culture, it rests instead in the extent to which we are to make our own values malleable in order rationalize our understandable but illogical emotion.

Good grief, I agree with Stephen Taylor -- somebody mark the day on the calendar. The blind squirrel has found a nut - those who give up liberty for security get and deserve neither. But then, as if to prove himself blind, he bring the whole thing back and dumps it in the lap of the "Eeeeevul Libruls"

There is inconsistency on the Liberal side too, of course. Khadr was captured, interrogated and held under approval from the previous Liberal administrations. For them to demand his return, shows intellectual dishonesty and absurd emotionalism.

Or it could show that new information has come to light regarding the fact that the boy was being tortured, that the previous governments had no reason to think he would be held indefinitely, or simply that they are willing to admit that they made a mistake and would like to see it corrected. But of course admitting mistakes is not something neocons are really able to do for some reason.

Khadr should not be returned to Canada, as we do not simply return Canadian citizens to Canada when they run afoul of the law in the United States. However,
to complete this logical loop, Khadr must face the law in an American court. With both US Presidential candidates calling for the closure of Guantanamo, Prime Minister Harper would be wise to call for Khadr to face American due process.

Yes, it would be wise for the Prime Minister to call for Khadr to face due process, if such a thing existed instead of the current kangaroo court system faced by Gitmo inmates. And we regularly bring Canadians imprisoned in foreign countries back to Canada.

Some background on the "due process" and this case can be found here. There is plenty to digest, but in terms of the system faced, this bit is enlightening:

The Supreme Court heard on March 28, 2006, a challenge to George W. Bush's power to create military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes (cf. the profile of Salim Ahmed Hamdan in "related cases"). On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the US President exceeded his authority in establishing the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay. The Court also ruled that the commissions violated U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions.

A controversial new bill was passed by the US Senate and the House of Representatives in late September 2006.

The Military Commissions Act, which is heavily criticised by human rights organisations- allows terror suspects to be tried by military tribunals rather than civilian courts- gives defendants a legal right to see evidence and a (limited) right to counsel- forbids "serious" breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as torture, in the course of interrogation procedures- gives the president the authority to "interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions"- allows for hearsay evidence in trials of terror suspects.

Furthermore, the new legislation prohibits any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.

The new bill entered into force following signature by the President in October
2006.

So given the cold, hard facts in the cases, namely that due process as it is understood by reasonable people anywhere in the western democracies will not be visited upon the unfortunate Mr.Khadr, and given that he says we all deserve due process etcetera, Stephen chooses to jump off the bridge of logic into the river of fear and concludes that we don't dare bring one our own citizens home to face due process, but that we should abandon them to a kangaroo court system in a country that has repudiated the rule of law and its own adherence to international treaties and acceptable conduct. A country that tortured Khadr while he was still a child and continues to hold hundreds without charge and dubious recourse to the courts. Interesting choice.

Logic?

You keep using this word, Stephen. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Crossposted and expanded from the Woodshed

Shorter Korn Kob Kory

on repatriating Omar Khadr:

"Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah

The Libs did it fir-rst and so

we're just following the-em

Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah"

A rousing display of independent foreign policy analysis from "the genius behind Corn Cob Bob, the ethanol lobby's mascot with the corncob head"

Kuebler suggests that Harper grow a pair

Gitmo trials rigged , says Omar Khadr's US military lawyer :

"He's not going to get a fair trial," Kuebler told The Canadian Press from his office in Washington, D.C."
Military commissions aren't designed to be fair. They're designed to produce convictions."
Harper could pre-empt the hearing by asking Washington to send Khadr -Guantanamo Bay's lone western detainee and also its youngest - back to Canada, Kuebler said.
"I hope that the prime minister of Canada finally decides to stand up and act like a prime minister of Canada and protect the rights of a Canadian citizen."

Algeria managed it. Algeria. Also Saudi Arabia, Pakistan ...
But we won't. Why? Apparently because the charges against Khadr are serious :

"Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things," the prime minister said last week. "There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process."

"We can't ignore the serious charges Mr. Khadr is facing," [PM's new spokesweasel Kory] Teneycke said. "The proper forum for determining his guilt or innocence is a judicial process not a political process."

"Eugénie Cormier-Lassonde, spokesperson for Canada's department of foreign affairs, says Khadr faces "serious charges ... includ[ing] murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, material support for terrorism, and spying, all in violation of the laws of war."See, apparently Canada just doesn't do the "serious things" ourselves.

Sure, we're ok for the non-serious stuff, like making apologies to First Nations and promising aid to Africa that we don't deliver, but when it comes to the really serious things like torture and illegal kangaroo courts - well, we leave that stuff up to the Serious People : Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - people who can't travel outside their own country without triggering war criminal proceedings.

Gates and CondiRice are on record as wanting Guantanamo shut down, McCain and Obama have vowed to close it, and US Supreme Court has ruled against it three times in as many years.
As Kuebler recently said of Harper : "He can stop taking his orders from the Bush administration and stop being the last leader of a Western country to subsidize a failed process in Guantanamo Bay."

But Harper is not a leader, so Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, a conservative Republican in the U.S. Navy who most definitely does have a pair, is doing his best to fill in for him.

Cross-posted, more or less, at Creekside

Dfait : Khadr's rights got lost among competing departments

Ottawa fought Khadr's transfer to Gitmo, says a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade official, but explains :
well we lost that one so when the U.S. said they would only allow foreign federal agents and not foreign diplomats in to see Khadr, I "reached out" to someone in dfait's intelligence branch and then - surprise surprise - our dfait intel guy invited some CSIS guys and the CIA told us to butt out and leave everything to CSIS and somehow "the prisoner's rights got lost among departments and officials with competing priorities."

Oh yeah, and our dfait guy did finally get to ask Khadr some questions "about his family and armed jihad" after he learned Khadr had been put on a three week sleep deprivation regime for the benefit of our interrogators but hey, "ultimately, the blame for what goes on in Guantanamo Bay rests with the government that created it."

No it fucking doesn't.
You had a responsibility to Canada, to a Canadian citizen, and to Canadian and international law.
This business of CSIS interrogating Canadians after they've been "softened up" in other countries - Arar, Abdelrazik, Almalki - is just the price of the "Trade" part of your name.

Tell you what, let's just rename DFAIT the Department of Flunky Ass-licking Institutionalized Toadying to the US and if we're ever in short supply of that, we'll call you.

Cross-posted at Creekside

China goes to Gitmo

NYT : Terrorism and the Olympics

"After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent. [Uighurs are Turkic farmers inhabiting the Xinjiang region]

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators."

The author Nicholas Kristof also has a blog where he notes :

"What irks me is the Bush administration backing the Chinese Communist Party as it uses the "war on terror" as a cover to go after those moderate Uighur dissidents who favor more autonomy or religious freedom but oppose any violence. The Bush administration listed the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" as a terror organization in the aftermath of 9/11, apparently as a "thanks" to Beijing for its help in cracking down on terror financing."

"Thanks", as in : China leaned on Pakistan, Pakistan made promises, Pakistan is no longer keeping them.

So in exchange for some financial finangling, China gets to blur the line between dissidents who oppose violence and terrorists.

All of which leaves me wondering what Canada's Gitmo deal is with the US, the one wherein we make nice about being the last country in the world to press for release of a Canadian child-soldier held there since his 15th birthday in 2002.
Yesterday Khadr's US military lawyer William Kuebler alleged that Col. Peter Brownback, the judge hearing Omar Khadr's case, was abruptly dismissed, after he "threatened to suspend the case unless prosecutors turned over key evidence to the defense lawyers".

In April Maxime Bernier stood beside Condi Rice in Washington and announced it would be

"premature to comment about the legal process right now and appeal process because they’re still ongoing. And what we will do is we’ll do -- and I received also assurances that Mr. Khadr has been treated humanely."

"And what we will do is we'll do --" a little thought hiccup there from Max. I wonder now what he stopped himself from saying.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Supreme Court : Canada acted illegally in Khadr case

The Star : "Canadian agents acted illegally when they interrogated Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and handed that intelligence to U.S. authorities, the Supreme Court ruled today in a decision damning the Bush administration's treatment of foreign terrorism suspects.

The unanimous decision released this morning said the federal government now must hand over documents pertaining to those 2003 interrogations by agents with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Foreign Affairs Department, since Canada participated in a process that was contrary to international law.

The ruling delivers a blow to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government which has been unwavering in its support of the U.S. war crimes prosecution of Khadr despite mounting domestic and international pressure."

Good on the Supremes.
Khadr's lawyers were hoping to also force the government to release a "U.S. post-battle report in Canada's possession that may contradict other accounts of the July 2002 firefight. Military prosecutors told a Guantanamo court last month that the original report had gone missing."

It's not clear from this ruling if that report will now be denied them. It's the one in which :

"Lt. Col. W.", the Army Commander for Eastern Afghanistan at the time of the attack, had initially written in his report the day after the firefight that "the person who threw a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer also died in the firefight"

- casting doubt on any subsequent report blaming Khadr.
The U.S. has "lost" their copy so making the Canadian government cough up theirs is crucial to Khadr's case; Khadr's U.S. military lawyer says he will almost certainly lose the case without it.
Incredibly, Canadian "Government lawyers had countered that they did not have an obligation to disclose documents for a U.S. trial."

Our government - not too good at protecting the rights of Canadian citizens in detention abroad but absolutely excellent at ass-covering.

Kady O'Malley has more details and a link to the actual *unaminous* ruling.

More Kady : "The federal judge who will, as per today’s ruling, make the final decision on which documents will be disclosed to Omar Khadr’s legal team, and which may be redacted or withheld for reasons of national security grounds is Richard Mosley — the same Richard Mosley who, during a previous incarnation as associate deputy minister at the Department of Justice, was responsible for drafting much of Canada’s current anti-terrorist legislation, which has raised concerns over potential conflict of interest in the past."

CBC : "Defence lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr said Friday's Supreme Court of Canada ruling ordering Ottawa to grant limited access to confidential documents falls "far short" of what they hoped for."
"Lawyers for the Canadian government argued that releasing the files could jeopardize international relations and reveal classified information."

Cross-posted at Creekside

Jason Kenney: Liar or moron?

The Toronto Star does it right and calls bullshit on Conservative Rottweiller Jason Kenney for using a widely discredited piece of propaganda as if it were the gospel truth.

"In a terse exchange, Kenney asked him if this meant he equated Canada's inaction with "Al Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down's syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated." Kenney was referring to an erroneous story about unwitting bombers in Iraq - which military officials later retracted when it was revealed the bombers were adults and did not have Down's syndrome."

Jason Kenney: Mendacious moron, prevaricating prick or just an ignorant, loudmothed jackass who doesn't know what he's talking about? We report, you decide.
What a novel concept - a politician talks out his ass and the media actually points out that he is talking out his ass. I could get used that.

The issue in question that Kenney is trying to distract from is Liberal Senator Romeo Dallaire's comment that Canada's Gnu Gummint should maybe be trying to do something about the plight of Omar Khadr, the 21-year-old who went to Guantanamo Bay intead of high school and college after he was shot and captured in Afghanistan at age 15 by U.S. Special Forces during a raid on Taliban encampment. He is alleged to have thrown a grenade that killed a US soldier, for which the US is charging him with a war crime.

Kady O'Malley was there for the subcommittee hearing in which Dallaire pointed out the obvious, that Khadr's case has become a political hot potato that has more to do with the US government not wanting to admit it is breaking the law than it does with Khadr's alleged war crime.

The National Post quotes the exhange at the parliamentary subcommitte on human rights:

"In panicking, [the United States] is doing exactly what the extremists and terrorists are doing. They don't want to play by the rules," testified Mr. Dallaire.

So naturally Jason "Fathead" Kenney, like many a factually-challenged blogging tory, grabs the wrong end of the false equivency stick and immediately jumps to the defence of the poor, helpless, U.S. military-industrial-national security apparatus and decides to bring Al-Quaida in the whole thing:

"Is it your testimony that al-Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down's syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country? Is that your position?" Mr. Kenney asked.
"If you want a black and white, absolutely," replied Mr. Dallaire. "You're either with the law or not with the law.
"My position is that the minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against the fundamentals of those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all."

Interestingly, the hacks atthe National Post headline their story "Dallaire likens U. S., Canada to al-Qaeda" when it was Kenney that brought up Al-Qaeda, not Dallaire. Like you needed further proof that the National Post is lame.

Dallaire amplified his remarks further today (from the Toronto Star story)

"Suffice it to say that I in no way intended to equate Canadian or U.S. authorities with the terrorist organization Al Qaeda," Dallaire wrote today. "But we cannot avoid the point that if we violate international law in our pursuit of the war on terror, we risk reducing ourselves, collectively, to the same level as those we oppose.
"Our acquiescence with his continued incarceration and prosecution puts in question Canada's standing as a nation that respects global human rights and international law."

Absolutely goddamn 100 percent correct.

Pierre Pollivere also shows he's more interested in protecting George W. Bush's reputation than protecting the human rights of a Canadian child


crossposted from the Woodshed  - now with occasional music and video sermons