Original author: Press Release Source: CAIR-CAN.CA URL: [link] Date: August 25, 2005 For immediate release, 25/08/05 The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) welcomes today's decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to hear a challenge to Canada's security certificate process.

"Security certificates violate both the rule of law and the most basic legal protections, such as the right to due process, to a fair trial, and to be free from torture," says Riad Saloojee, CAIR-CAN's executive director. "In their current form, security certificates make a mockery of justice. We hope that the Supreme Court will examine this regime with the critical eye it deserves," he added. Adil Charkaoui, one of five men currently being tried under security certificates, has been granted leave by the Supreme Court to challenge the certificate process as violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law. Under security certificates, the government does not have to disclose the nature of the allegations against a defendant, and evidence can be heard in secret. The process applies only to non-citizens, who can be held indefinitely under the certificates.

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Original author: Sue Montgomery Source: The Montreal Gazette URL: [link] (subscribers only) Date: September 18, 2005

The watchdog of Canada's spy agency has finally said what many - especially the five Muslim men held under security certificates - have known for some time. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service does shoddy work and for some strange reason known only to it, destroys key pieces of evidence such as tape recordings and notes. In a secret report, obtained by news organizations last week, Paule Gauthier, former chairperson of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, slammed CSIS for a hasty, slipshod investigation and a "regrettable" attitude that people supporting Arab causes are suspect.

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Original author: Haroon Siddiqui
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link]
Date: September 22, 2005

Alexandre Trudeau is passionate in his critique of the subject of his next documentary, the federal security certificates under which five terrorism suspects have been in jail for about the last five years.

Two of them have gone on hunger strikes, evoking media memories of the 1981 prison hunger strike of Irish republican Bobby Sands who died after 66 days.

A more contemporary comparison would be with that of the recent 70-day hunger strike by Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji in Tehran's infamous Evin prison, the same place where Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was killed.

Ganji has been in jail since April 2000 for exposing the murderous activities of the ruling mullahs. In June, he stopped eating in protest against, among other things, his solitary confinement and the refusal of officials to let him see his wife and family. In mid-July he had to be rushed to hospital where, a month later, under circumstances not known to the public, he broke his fast.

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Original author: Michael Den Tandt
Source: The Globe and Mail
URL: [link]
Date: September 22, 2005


Ottawa - Former Liberal solicitor-general Warren Allmand yesterday called on Ottawa to repeal anti-terrorist legislation, saying Bill C-36 and other federal anti-terrorist measures are unnecessary and an unjustifiable abrogation of due process.

"If we in Canada can suspend the rule of law and due process for reasons we say are right, then so can others," said Mr. Allmand, speaking on behalf of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

Mr. Allmand, Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland and Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, appeared before the Commons security committee yesterday to voice continuing concerns about C-36 and security certificate provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

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Original author: Kate Malloy and F. Abbas Rana Source: The Hill Times URL: [link] Date: September 19th, 2005

A former CSIS member lashes out at the spy agency, but CSIS stands by its investigative work.

A former member of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the spy agency's recent slipshod investigation of Bhupinder Liddar whom CSIS mistakenly declared a security threat because of its "regrettable" attitude that supporting Arab causes can be suspicious, is "just another typical example of how CSIS destroys some peoples' lives and careers." The former CSIS member, who did not want to be named, told The Hill Times last week that the spy agency has had to pay "more than a few individuals as a result of the spy agency's suspicions being reported as hard facts," and said the spy agency will "fight any attempts to get the actual information they used to claim he is a security threat because the service does not want it to be known that they never had anything substantive about Mr. Liddar, only fears and suspicions."

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Original author: NDP Press Release
Source: NDP.CA
URL: [link]
Date: September 22, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SEPTEMBER 21, 2005

STATEMENT BY ALEXA McDONOUGH

REGARDING Mohamed Mahjoub's HUNGER STRIKE

Halifax - NDP Peace Advocate and Foreign Affairs Critic Alexa
McDonough today issued the following statement:

"I am deeply concerned about the deteriorating health of Mr.
Mahjoub, currently on his 76th day of a hunger strike to protest
conditions at the Toronto West Detention Centre.

"Mr. Mahjoub's demands are reasonable and justified. The Ontario
government's decision to send Mr. Mahjoub to hospital, albeit
temporarily, was a welcome first step. It is also an indication of
the gravity of his medical situation. I sincerely hope that the
Ontario government conducted the liver biopsy to treat Mr. Mahjoub's
hepatitis C, contracted in jail, and treated his knee injury prior
to returning him to prison.

"Furthermore, the continued refusal to allow Mr. Mahjoub to see his
children without a barrier is unnecessarily cruel.

"Security Certificates are a violation of basic human rights. They
fly in the face of all that Canada purports to stand for. Canadians
want an end to the use of these discriminatory and unjust practices.
Thanks to NDP Justice Critic Joe Comartin, Parliament's
Sub-Committee on National Security tasked with reviewing Bill C-36
is also reviewing Security Certificates.

"I hope that the Ontario government will do the right thing and
ensure that Mr. Mahjoub, facing the risk of kidney damage and
cardiac arrhythmia, gets the necessary treatment he is entitled to."

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Original author: Press Release Source: Coalition Justice pour Adil Charkaoui Listserv Date: September 19, 2005

ATTENTION: NEWS EDITORS Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada PO Box 73620 509 St. Clair Ave. West Toronto, ON M6C 1C0 (416) 651-5800 [email] [link] Day 75 of Hunger Strike of Mohammad Mahjoub: Wife of Secret Trial Detainee Leads Noontime Rally Monday, Sept. 19, 12 Noon, Offices of Corrections Minister Monte Kwinter, 25 Grosvenor St. (2 blocks north of Yonge and College)

On Monday, September 19 at 12 Noon, outside the offices of Ontario Corrections Minister Monte Kwinter (25 Grosvenor, two blocks north and west of Yonge and College), Mona Elfouli will lead a rally calling for immediate intervention to save the life of her husband, secret trial detainee Mohammad Mahjoub, now in day 75 of a hunger strike in solitary confinement at Metro West Detention Centre. The group will then march to Queen's Park and demand a meeting with Premier Dalton McGuinty, who is ultimately responsible for the life of Mr. Mahjoub.

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Original author: Professor Sharryn J. Aiken, Queen's Univ. Source: Forwarded to NOWAR-PAIX Email List Date: September 18, 2005 [full letter to Anne McLellan originally written October, 2004 re-printed below] Please forward and post: PRESS RELEASE - Statement by Lawyers against the War

Lawyers Against the War deplores the conditions inflicted by the governments of Canada and Ontario that have driven Security Certificate prisoners Hassan Almrei and Mohammad Mahjoub to life-threatening hunger strikes. The Security Certificate system under which non-citizens are arrested and detained indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence is a violation of Canadian and international human rights law. A letter of October 14, 2004 to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness by more than sixty eminent legal authorities, expressed 'grave and urgent concern about both the arbitrary detention and the removal to torture of non-citizens in Canada pursuant to the Security Certificate procedure'. The full letter is attached to this statement. We believe that this un-Canadian behaviour is a result of the new American witch-hunt that is the Bush administration's illegal and mendacious 'War on Terror', which has already resulted in the Canada's complicity in the torture of our own citizens.

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Original author: Jeff Sallot Source: The Globe and Mail URL: Date: September 16, 2005

Canada doesn't want information gleaned through torture, she writes

OTTAWA - CSIS does not want intelligence from foreign agencies if the information may have been obtained by torture, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan says, contradicting testimony from senior CSIS officials last year at the Arar inquiry. In a letter to Amnesty International, 10 months after it raised the issue, Ms. McLellan says that to protect privacy and human rights, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is very careful about the information it exchanges with foreign agencies. But her comments, released yesterday in response to allegations that Canadian authorities may have been party to torture in Syria, are at odds with CSIS policy as senior officials at the agency outlined it at the Arar commission of inquiry. They said CSIS would use information obtained by torture if it could be corroborated.

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Source: email from Paul Copeland, lawyer for Mohamed Harkat Date: September 15, 2005
Paul Cavalluzzo Source of Photo: CBC.CA What follows are extracts from a press conference held by Paul Cavalluzzo, counsel to the Arar Inquiry, September 14, 2005 in Ottawa Paul Cavalluzzo: Although many of our hearings have been in camera, as is the case in analogous areas of the law like national security certificate cases, there are two fundamental differences with our procedure. First, the government evidence was vigorously tested on two bases. Our objectives were to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the evidence and to ensure that the evidence is the kind of information which should be heard in camera. The second difference is that government witnesses were cross-examined by independent commission counsel who had access to all of the documents and information we demanded from the government. As a lawyer I believe that the procedure we adopted might be a model for other areas of the law, such as national security cases which many Canadians believe is fundamentally unfair. Our procedure hopefully accomplished two values which underlie our legal system. First, in this kind of case, government evidence should be vigorously tested by independent counsel and not brought forward before a judge on an ex parte basis. Secondly, secret government evidence should be vigorously tested to ensure that it should not be disclosed to the public particularly when it is the government's actions or inaction under review. Transparency and openness should be the general rule.

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