Return of the Combating Terrorism Act

Your government announced yesterday, on a Friday just before the playoffs, that it needs more powers to combat terrorism.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson : "These provisions are necessary to protect our country from the threat of terrorism."

A redo of the panicky now defunct Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, the new Combating Terrorism Act includes preventive arrest and forcing people to testify at secret hearings about terrorist acts that might happen in the future, and if you don't like it you can go to jail for up to a year with a judge's option to extend.

There are more safeguards included this time round - you can have a lawyer! at any time! - which will only allow the Libs to go along with it so as not to be painted as soft on terrorism. Mark Holland, Liberal critic for Public Safety and National Security, already looking to cave.

The argument in favour of anti-terrorism legislation is that criminal law only deals with crimes already committed. What to do about people who feel that crimes perpetrated by the state against their people require a response like blowing things up?

The argument against it is ... well, let's look at how they're doing with the laws they've already got.

The federal government case against Ottawa terror suspect Mohamed Harkat appears to have suffered a significant blow Wednesday when a document was introduced in court showing that Abu Zubaydah, once considered a master terrorist and 9/11 mastermind, actually had nothing to do with the attacks.

Even more surprising, the document, which quotes U.S court filings declassified last week, shows that Zubaydah, once believed to be one of the top leaders in al-Qaeda, was not even a member of the terrorist group.

The unfortunate Mr. Zubaydah got waterboarded 83 times in the US, coughed up Harkat's name, and the Canadian government obligingly held Harkat for 3 1/2 years.
A clue about the reliability of Abu Zubaydah's "testimony" might have been found in his confession to terrorist acts committed after his imprisonment, but sadly, no, it wasn't.

Abdelrazik? "Closely associated" with the same hapless Abu Zubaydah.
Result? Abdelrazik was tortured, then exiled in Sudan for six years. Still on the UN's 1267 terror list, and the Canadian government has frozen his bank account and he can't work.
Help him get off that list? Blow me, said Minister of Public Security Peter Van Loan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon.

Maher Arar - the first inkling for many of us that something had gone terribly wrong.
Adil Charkaoui - in custody 21 months, now free.
Hassan Almrei - in custody for 8 years, now free.
Mahmoud Jaballah - in custody for 6 years, now free.
Mohammad Mahjoub - in custody for 7 years, freed, requested return to jail in 2009 to protest bail conditions worse than jail.
Benamar Benatta - rendered to US for 5 years
Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin

And then there's the ever-expanding definition of just what constitutes terrorism.
According to Jason Kenney's "infandous" Mr. Velshi, George Galloway's proposed visit to Canada last year to give a speech entitled "Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar" was sufficient for him to prevent a sitting British MP already on tour in the US from entering Canada on the grounds he is "a terrorist supporter".

Nothing about these vile clowns inspires any confidence in their wanting to accrue more secretive powers to their already abused arsenal of abominations.

"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.

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

Abdelrazik vs the Government of Canada

Harper's quest to turn Canada into an outpost of apology for the worst crimes of the Bush administration continues today as the Government of Canada v. Abdelrazik shuffles into the Supreme Court - even as the UN states Canada is free to bring Abdelrazik home.

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon in the House of Commons on Monday :

"Mr. Abdelrazik is on the list established by the United Nations Security Council as an individual with ties to al-Qaeda. Therefore, he is subject to a travel ban and an asset freeze. Our government is taking its obligations seriously and that is why we are not going to issue him a travel document to return home."

Richard Barrett, co-ordinator of the UN's Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, which oversees the various United Nations resolutions establishing the blacklist on which Mr. Abdelrazik was placed at the request of Washington in 2006 :

"Canada is free to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home and doesn't need to ask for permission"

Addressing the Justice Department's argument that "it is geographically impossible for [Mr. Abdelrazik] to travel from Sudan to Canada by air, land or sea without transiting through the sovereign territories (land, airspace or territorial waters) of numerous UN member states which are bound at international law to prevent such transit, " Mr. Barrett stated :

"The overflight states don't come into it and they haven't ever come into it."

Well there goes legal bullshit argument#1 of the Government of Canada vs Abdelrazik, being argued today in the Supreme Court of Canada.
This just leaves Justice Department bullshit legal argument #2 : that Abdelrazik is :

"close to Abu Zubaydah, a former lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, involved in al-Qaeda training and recruitment."

That would be Abu Zubaydah, the half-wit waterboarded 83 times to coerce a false confession linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.
.
For those able to attend, the hearing today is at Supreme Court, West courtroom, 301 Wellington Street, Ottawa at 9:30am.
Wear a suit, bring pitchforks.
.
And thank you, Paul Koring at the G&M, for your ongoing excellent coverage of Abdelrazik's plight.
Update : Dr. Dawg attended Thursday and will have another post up when he gets back Friday night.
.
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.

Hiding under the bed of George Bush

I still maintain this is related to this.

h/t POGGE

More evil

Apparently it isn't just Thomas Wolfe who can never come home again.

Apparently it doesn't matter if the RCMP and CSIS say you aren't a terrorist, what matters is whether a regime - known to have imprisoned and tortured people for no good reason - that is no longer in power once said you were a terrorist.

The George W. Bush administration = evil.

The Stephen Harper administration = evil's lil' helper.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon = unprintable, even on a blog.

Canada has moved the goalposts on Abdelrazik once again

Montreal man in Sudan has to get off blacklist before he can fly :

"Abousfian Abdelrazik was initially told he could obtain travel documents, such as an emergency passport, in order to return to Canada – as long as he had a plane ticket.

But Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon now says the 47-year-old must get his name off a UN terrorist blacklist before he can come home.

His comments come little more than a week after a group of 170 Canadians pooled their money to purchase a plane ticket. They did so knowing they could be charged under Canadian law for contributing financially to someone who is on a UN terror list."

A UN terrorist blacklist, you say, Mr. Cannon?

Canada feared U.S. backlash over man trapped in Sudan

"Senior government of Canada officials should be mindful of the potential reaction of our U.S. counterparts to Abdelrazik's return to Canada as he is on the U.S. no-fly list," intelligence officials say in documents in the possession of The Globe and Mail.

"Continued co-operation between Canada and the U.S. in the matters of security is essential. We will need to continue to work closely on issues related to the Security of North America, including the case of Mr. Abdelrazik," the document says.

The Abdelrazik documents - prepared by senior intelligence and security officials in Transport Canada, the unit that creates and maintains Canada's own version of the terrorist "no-fly" list - make clear that it was the U.S. list that kept Mr. Abdelrazik from returning to Canada when he was released from prison three years ago. "

OK. So really it's about the US list. And the Canadian government's position is that sacrificing a Canadian citizen and the sovereignty of Canada is just the price of keeping those trucks flowing back and forth across the border without tripping over any accompanying U.S. frowny faces.

How's that working out for us?

U.S. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said this week :

"a recent northern border review by her department highlighted ongoing U.S. worries about how Canada conducts risk assessments of people entering the country and "very real" differences in immigration and visa policy.
"That of course is a security concern," she said."

Christopher Sands, a Canada-U.S. border expert at the Hudson Institute, called Napolitano's comments "arresting" and said they show Washington is not yet convinced that Canada has done enough on security around who enters the country.

"She said, there's a security risk there," said Sands. "They have looked and seen differences between what the U.S. does, and what Canada does, and seen it as a source of concern."

As has been noted here before, Sands, whom the Montreal Gazette fails to note is also on the North American Competitiveness Council and co-author of Negotiating North America : The Security and Prosperity Partnership, put it more succinctly back in November :

"In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians.
Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

"Homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends."

They've made their deal, I'd say.

Dr. Dawg has it about right.

Chris wrote to his MP asking what assurances he has that as an international traveller the government will protect him. You can do the same.
To contact Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon directly :
Telephone: (613) 992-5516
Fax: (613) 992-6802
EMail: CannoL@parl.gc.ca .

Canada, Sudan, and Abdelrazik : a mighty stench of hypocrisy

Two headlines on Canada and Sudan today, just hours apart ...

Canada urges Sudan to cooperate with the International Criminal Court
after the bench issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Beshir for war crimes in Darfur.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon :

"Canada strongly supports the work of the ICC, including its work in Sudan," he said, calling for "ongoing international scrutiny of Sudan's commitments to human rights."

Sure. Unless, of course, Canada is making use of Sudan's crappy human rights record to detain and torture a Canadian citizen, Abousfian Abdelrazik. Then we're not so keen on either the "scrutiny" or those "commitments to human rights" :

CSIS asked Sudan to arrest Canadian, files reveal
Abdelrazik is 'first case of Canadian rendition,' MP says

"Canadian security operatives asked Sudan - a country with a notorious record of torture and abuse in its prisons - to arrest and detain Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik, according to heavily redacted Canadian documents, marked "secret."

The newly obtained documents provide the strongest evidence to date that Canadian Security Intelligence agents engaged in the Bush-era U.S. practice of getting other countries to imprison those it considered security risks aboard rather than charge them with any crime."

Abdelrazik fled to Canada in 1990 after being imprisoned in Sudan for his political beliefs following a coup by the same President Omar al-Beshir the ICC is after today.
Abdelrazik was granted refugee status and in 1995 he became a Canadian citizen.
While he was visiting his ailing mother in Khartoum in 2003, Canada had him arrested and interrogated there. Despite his being declared innocent of terrorist ties and released from prison by Sudan - even despite Sudan's offer to fly him home to Canada - Canada refused to return or reissue his expired passport and his name subsequently went on the U.S. no-fly list.

G&M :

"When faced with interrogation by Sudanese and FBI agents, Mr. Abdelrazik feared he would again be imprisoned and tortured in Sudan's notorious jails and pleaded for a Canadian diplomat to accompany him to the interrogation."

On April 3, 2007, Foreign Affairs point man on the case, Sean Robertson, sent a response to the Canadian embassy in Khartoum :

"Mission staff should not accompany Abdelrazik to his interview with the FBI."

A month later a Canadian embassy official in Khartoum told Ottawa that Mr. Abdelrazik had been told by the FBI that he would never see Canada again unless he implicated others as al-Qaeda operatives.

I do believe we've been here before.

Let Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon know you're watching - Cannon.L@parl.gc.ca. -and support Abdelrazik's return to Canada on Facebook.

See previous Creekside posts on Abdelrazik or Dr. Dawg's superior coverage

Cross-posted at Creekside

Support Abdelrazik on Facebook

Yesterday at Creekside I posted about the plight of Abousfian Abdelrazik and the new catch-22 conditions our government has seen fit to impose on his return to Canada :

"Mr. Abdelrazik must present a fully-paid-for ticket home before "Passport Canada will issue an emergency passport," the government said in a Dec. 23 letter to his lawyers. But Mr. Abdelrazik, who is living in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, is destitute and the government has warned that it could criminally charge anyone who lends or gives money for a ticket under its sweeping anti-terrorist regulations."

Sumeet Jain, a member of BASAS, the British Association of South Asian Studies, left me this comment at Creekside . BASAS, according to their website, is "the largest UK academic association for the study of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and the South Asian Diaspora."

"See the facebook group I have set up to support Abousifian. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69034411293

I am asking everyone to send him a token donation to get a ticket home and to protest the Canadian government’s stand that anyone who supports him is a supporter of terrorism."

Quite right. Both Sudan and the RCMP have already cleared Abdelrazik of suspicion :

"The RCMP conducted a review of its files and was unable to locate any current and substantive information that indicates Mr. Abdelrazik is involved in criminal activity,"wrote Mike McDonell, the force's assistance commissioner for national security criminal investigations, in a Nov. 15, 2007, letter that formed the basis for the government's request that Mr. Abdelrazik be taken off the UN blacklist.
However, that request was blocked by at least one member of the UN Security Council – presumed to be the United States."

It is appalling that this has been allowed to drag on for more than five years, leaving Abdelrazik destitute and living in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum. If he is guilty of anything other than being on a no-fly list, bring him home and charge him.

Mr. Jain's facebook link above. Go.

Previous posts on Abdelrazik

Update : Dr. Dawg sends a letter.

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

Abdelrazik is another Arar

Remember Abousfian Abdelrazik, the Canadian/Sudanese imprisoned and allegedly tortured in Sudan for two years at Canada's request? Sudan found him innocent of terrorist charges in 2004 and offered to fly him back to Montreal but Canada declined so Abdelrazik is now living in the lobby of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum. Yeah that guy.

Canada feared U.S. backlash over man trapped in Sudan

Senior [Transport Canada] intelligence officials warned against allowing Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, to return home from Sudan because it could upset the Bush administration, classified documents reveal.

"Senior government of Canada officials should be mindful of the potential reaction of our U.S. counterparts to Abdelrazik's return to Canada as he is on the U.S. no-fly list," intelligence officials say in documents in the possession of The Globe and Mail.

"Continued co-operation between Canada and the U.S. in the matters of security is essential. We will need to continue to work closely on issues related to the Security of North America, including the case of Mr. Abdelrazik," the document says.

The "Security of North America".
Drop Steve and David a line : pm@pm.gc.ca and Emerson.D@parl.gc.ca


Update : A response from DFAIT :

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G2
July 24, 2008

Dear XXXXXXX

On behalf of the Honourable David Emerson, Minister of Foreign Affairs, thank you for your correspondence of July 2, 2008 regarding Mr. Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan.

While the Privacy Act prevents me from sharing detailed information on this case, I can assure you that Canadian consular officials are providing Mr. Abdelrazik with assistance to ensure his health and well-being. We will continue to assist Mr. Abdelrazik until the matter has been resolved.

With respect to allegations that the Government of Canada was involved in Mr. Abdelrazik's arrest, I should clarify that this matter falls outside the purview of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. As such, you may wish to share your concerns with Public Safety Canada.

Again, thank you for writing.

Sincerely yours,
Sean Robertson,
Director, Case Management Division
Consular Services and Emergency Management Branch

Mr Robertson is, according to CBC, "the senior foreign affairs official in charge of Abdelrazik's file".

Cross-posted 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

Abdelrazik : another Arar

"The similarities with Mr. Arar's case are compelling. In both instances, a Canadian citizen is fingered by CSIS as a terrorist suspect. In both cases, no charges are laid in Canada. In both, the person is arrested and imprisoned abroad. In both, Canadian officials say there is little that they can do because the person is in the country of their other citizenship."

The above quote is from the Globe&Mail in their front page story in April about Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian/Sudanese imprisoned and allegedly tortured in Sudan for two years at Canada's request. Frequently visited by CSIS officials, he was eventually cleared by Sudan of all allegations that he was a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda and released. Sudan offered to fly him home to Montreal in a private jet but Canada obstructed the deal.

Since then he has been "sheltering" and living on handouts at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, except for that five months when he was reincarcerated after threatening to make his case to Prime Minister Martin on the PM's visit to Sudan. Canada has refused to renew his passport or to transport him back to Canada on any of the subsequent government flights between Canada and Sudan.

The G&M returned to Abdelrazik's plight today (bold:mine) :

"In a telephone interview Monday, Mr. Abdelrazik said he told a Canadian diplomat he was being repeatedly beaten by Sudanese interrogators in 2004 or 2005. "He didn't care," Mr. Abdelrazik said.
Mr. Abdelrazik, who was to submit a sworn affidavit about his torture in Sudan to Federal Court in Ottawa Monday, confirmed all of the details in the draft document, including that he was interrogated by CSIS agents while in a Sudanese jail. However, the document remained unsigned because Canadian diplomats refused to deliver the faxed draft to Mr. Abdelrazik to sign."

What?! He's living right there in your embassy.

"Canadian government documents, which came to light in April, revealed he had been imprisoned in Sudan "at our request," meaning at the request of Canadian agents.

In its response, delivered Monday, the Justice Department opted not to dispute the assertion that Mr. Abdelrazik had been imprisoned at Canada's request, in effect conceding the fact before the court.

The documents presented in court, coupled with Mr. Abdelrazik's accounts of torture, suggest Canada secretly arranged for Sudan to arrest and imprison him, then sent Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents to interrogate him in a Sudanese prison while diplomats knew that he was being tortured but ignored that fact.

Canadian diplomats in Khartoum refused Monday, for the second day in a row, to permit Mr. Abdelrazik to sign the affidavit; his signature would have made it a sworn affidavit.

"The matter is under litigation and we cannot comment," said Anne Howland, spokeswoman for current Foreign Minister David Emerson. Other senior officials said the file is actually being handled in the Prime Minister's Office."

I'll just fucking bet it is. To read the anguished but impotent and self-serving hand-wringing by Foreign Affairs officials, go here:

"I wish I had a magic wand and make this case go away ... I find it unethical to hold him like this in limbo with no future, no hope and all because ... Obviously I cannot address the issue of the no-fly list ..."
"Mr. Abdelrazik "has reached the end of his rope, he has no money, no future, very little freedom and no hope. Should this case break wide open in the media, we may have a lot to explaining to do."

Well, it's broken open now so deal. Just send a fucking plane already.
If you can do it for Brenda Martin, you can do it for Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Write a letter, make a call, send a fax to :

David Emerson, Foreign Affairs :
Telephone: (613) 943-0267
Fax: (613) 943-0219
EMail: Emerson.D@parl.gc.ca

2148 Kingsway
Vancouver, British Columbia
V5N 2T5
Telephone: (604) 775-6263
Fax: (604) 775-6284

Stephen Harper : E-mail : pm@pm.gc.ca Fax: 613-941-6900

h/t to Roger in Comments for the reminder to post this access info.

Bees, honey, vinegar, no crayon - you know the drill.

Another form of extraordinary rendition

Canada's secret spy days are over : CSIS chief, said at a "recent and closed CIA-sponsored Global Futures Forum conference of international security services in Vancouver"

"Public terrorism trials are changing the way government spies operate, says Canada's spymaster, Jim Judd.
As a consequence of the fight against global Islamic terrorism, an increasing number of open-court criminal prosecutions in Canada, the U.S. and Europe have, at their genesis, information collected by shadowy secret agents rather than police officers.

Prior to 9/11 and in several cases since, most of those detained for suspected terrorist links in Canada were immigrants or refugees and the government conveniently relied on immigration laws and security certificates to quietly deport them to their countries of origin or hold them in custody.

But the alleged terrorist activities of Ottawa's Momin Khawaja and the "Toronto 11" -- all Canadian citizens awaiting trial in the first of Canada's post-9/11 terror prosecutions -- must be heard in open courts, where the prosecution's evidence is subject to the rigours of defence counsel scrutiny and the rules of evidence."

"The rigours of defence counsel scrutiny and the rules of evidence."
Judd refers to this as the "judicialization" of what has "traditionally been considered covert government information".

OK, hold that thought a moment - I'm coming back to it.

Yesterday, in The Lesson of the Arar inquiry : Keep it under wraps, Pogge wrote about Mr. Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen fingered by CSIS and arrested "at our request" in Sudan five years ago, where he alleges he was beaten while in custody, and frequently visited by CSIS.

In 2004, Sudan cleared him of all allegations that he was a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda and released him. They further offered to fly him home but Canada obstructed the deal. !!!
A few months later, Mr. Abdelrazik was then bundled off back to prison for another five months after suggesting he wanted to make his case to the prime minister.
Now released a second time, he remains trapped in Khartoum, his health failing, his family back here in Montreal.

And here's the perfect Catch 22 : He can't fly home because he's on a no-fly list and he can't go by land or sea because Canada continues to refuse him a passport.

From the G&M, who, to their eternal credit, put this on their front page yesterday :

"[Abdelrazik's lawyer] says the similarities with Mr. Arar's case are compelling. In both instances, a Canadian citizen is fingered by CSIS as a terrorist suspect. In both cases, no charges are laid in Canada. In both, the person is arrested and imprisoned abroad. In both, Canadian officials say there is little that they can do because the person is in the country of their other citizenship."

In both, he might have added, there were allegations of torture and examples of extraordinary callousness on the part of government officials. His lawyer calls it "another form of extraordinary rendition".
The G&M article does a fine job detailing the blatant ass-covering, Lib and Con, that appears to have formed the bulk of Foreign Affairs' concerns regarding Mr. Abdelrazik over the past five years. Just like with Arar, CSIS didn't want him to come back to Canada to embarrass them.
As CSIS chief, Jim Judd oversaw both cases.

POGGE asks for the second time now : How many more of them are there out there?

May 16, 2007, Day seeks security powers

"Anti-terror measures would restore `preventive arrests’ and help CSIS spies overseas
The federal government plans to try to revive the extraordinary anti-terror police powers of "investigative hearings" and "preventive arrest" as part of a series of major security initiatives."

"Preventative arrest" allows police to arrest without charge and judges to penalize without trial, people who the authorities fear might commit future terrorist offences.

"The government also says it will expand the ability of Canada's spy agency – the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) – to do covert foreign intelligence gathering abroad.
The two police powers slated for revival were killed by the opposition parties in a parliamentary vote in February.
In an appearance yesterday before the House of Commons public safety committee, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day indicated he has drafted a bill to reinstate those powers."

The bill is still pending, and as noted here, now also enjoys the support of the Liberals.

So when CSIS chief Jim Judd laments for the CIA the late great days of publicly unacknowleged extaordinary renditions, those pre-'judicialized' days unsullied by the "rigours of defence council scrutiny and rules of evidence", just remember it's because they're planning on bringing those days back.

Cross-posted at Creekside