Dear Frank

Good letter from Fern to Frank over at Dammit Janet :

My Letter to the Hon. Frank Iacobucci

Dear Sir,
I am writing to you as one private citizen of Canada to another.

As a former Supreme Court Justice and upholder of the Constitution, you must recognize that the government's move to employ you to examine the documents relevant to the Afghan detainee ruckus is, at least, not very popular among some knowledgeable commenters.

To many, me included, it is a mockery of the concept of Parliamentary supremacy.

It is, further, merely the latest in a long series of anti-democratic initiatives by this Conservative government.

No one questions your ability or your reputation. The issue is whether Parliament is to be allowed to do its job.

Please. Reject the assignment.

Yours truly,
fern hill

Phone: (direct) 416.865.8217 Fax: 416.865.7380
Email: fiacobucci (at) torys.com
Mail: 79 Wellington Street West, Suite 3000Box 270, TD CentreToronto, Ontario, M5K 1N2 Canada

I'm guessing Fern wouldn't mind if you copy and pasted that puppy with your own name under it.


Here's my letter :

Dear Frank :

In your last go round with whitewashing government complicity in torture, it took you 16 months to determine that even though :

1)CSIS and the RCMP "mistakenly" advised Egyptian and Syrian authorities that Canadian citizens Ahmad El Maati and Abdullah Almalki were "associated with Al Qaeda" and an "imminent threat to public security" and a "confessed terrorist" and that El Maati was "involved in a plan to commit a terrorist act in Canada", resulting in

2)El Maati being subjected to "electric shock to his hands, back and genitals, and sleep deprivation while being subjected to excruciatingly painful stress torture for days on end", and that subsequently

3)CSIS fired off a handy list of questions to be put to them,

you ultimately determined in your report that :

"I found no evidence that any of these of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of which they were part."

and

"It seems inevitable, in the struggle against terrorism that mistakes of various kinds will be made."

After which the government redacted "about 20% of your findings from the public document for national security reasons."

So, really, Frank, who gives a fuck what you think?

Yours truly,
Alison

Strongly advise sending Fern's letter instead.

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

Iacobucci greywash into Canadian torture-by-proxy and rendition-lite

Apparently "mistakes were made". That's all we get.

Shorter former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci : After two years of reviewing the cases of three Canadian citizens detained in Syria during which time the RCMP are alledged to have faxed Syria the questions to be put to them under torture, and after interviewing only the Canadian officials involved, I am ready to conclude that :

"The inquiry did find that the three men were tortured in foreign prisons and that the mistreatment may have "resulted indirectly from several actions of Canadian officials."

but that :

"I found no evidence that any of these of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of which they were part."

See, that's exactly what worries us, Frank.
That last bit right there.
Does 'conscientiously carrying out their duties and responsibilites' include outsourcing torture-by-proxy and rendition-lite to third party countries?

Rendition-lite : No, we don't bag em here; we wait till they're attending a wedding or visiting their dying Mom in Egypt and then put the word out. Or we just go along with the US doing it.
Torture-by-proxy : Hey, if you're gonna beat the crap out of our citizens anyway, I got a coupla questions you could put to them for us.

Because without testimony from those US and Syrian and Egyptian officials, who have been more than willing to finger Canadian complicity in these deals in the past when our own officials were denying it, what's the point of your secret inquiry?

Justice Dennis O'Connor's previous inquiry into our government's treatment of Maher Arar uncovered evidence of Canadian rendition-lite and torture-by-proxy.
He recommended a further inquiry to nail this down.
That's where your inquiry came in, Frank.
A mandate so narrow in its scope - not your fault, I know - does nothing to restore confidence in the ability of CSIS and the RCMP to act in our interests without sending us off to foreign countries to be tortured in the process.
And wasn't that the whole point?
Instead, with the release of this report, we now officially don't know any more than we did before.

Stockwell Day issues some pap on it :

"Our Government is moving forward on comprehensive and robust security and intelligence review measures.
Our Government is unwavering in its commitment to give law enforcement the tools they need to safeguard our national security and to ensure review mechanisms are in place to protect Canadians."

Fuck you, Doris. Not everyone else is quite so sanguine :

Reuters : Canada actions likely led to Syrian torture: report

AFP : Canada had role in torture of its nationals: probe

Kady live-blogs Iacobucci's press conference


Speaking of which, how's our other rendition-lite case, Abousfian Abdelrazik, doing?
Is he still living in the lobby at the Canadian embassy in Sudan?
Sudan is begging us to take him back as they consider him to be innocent and why should they look the bad guys in this? But DFAIT continues to obstruct his repatriation so as not to upset the Americans, while frantically attempting to appear not to do so.

Iacobucci's inquiry only considered Ahmad Abou El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin.
How many more are there? Who didn't make it home? How many more?

Cross-posted at Creekside