Original author: Canadian Press (CP)
Source: CTV.CA
URL: [link]
Date: April 14, 2005

TORONTO - Governments that deport suspected terrorists to countries known to torture detainees are either breathtakingly naive or complicit in the abuse if they rely on promises of humane treatment, a new report concludes.

The report, by the non-partisan organization Human Rights Watch, says Western nations, including Canada, are increasingly turning to hollow diplomatic assurances of fair treatment from suspect governments.

"Countries that rely on such assurances are either engaging in wishful thinking or using the assurances as a fig leaf to cover their complicity in torture,'' concludes the report, to be officially released Friday.

"Diplomatic assurances do not and cannot prevent torture.''

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Evan Dyer talked with Mohamed in jail and it was broadcast early this morning on the Ottawa Morning show. The interview is available on our Web site in MP3 format HERE.

Also, on the CBC TV national news at 6:00PM there was a story about the new Human Rights Watch report. The 91-page report, Still at Risk: Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard against Torture, documents the growing practice among Western governments "including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands" of seeking assurances of humane treatment in order to transfer terrorism suspects to states with well-established records of torture. The report details a dozen cases involving actual or attempted transfers to countries where torture is commonplace. It chastises Canada for its attempts to deport detainees to torture. Mahmoud Jaballah was shown briefly in the CBC news item.

Original author: Colin Perkel and Canadian Press Source: CANOE CNEWS URL: [link] Date: April 9, 2005

TORONTO (CP) - Canada's spy agency admits it shared information it obtained from a Canadian teen being held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay with American intelligence services, documents show. The transcripts of a cross-examination obtained by The Canadian Press also show the agency did not ask for guarantees the United States would not use the information in any prosecution that could result in the death penalty for Omar Khadr. "We did not seek those assurances," William Hooper, assistant director of operations for the Canadian Intelligence Security Service, told Khadr's lawyer during the closed-door hearing last month.

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Original author: Tonda MacCharle
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link] (subscribers only)
Date: April 5, 2005

OTTAWA - The Liberal government is moving to establish a new National Security Committee of parliamentarians that would give MPs unprecedented access to secret information collected by Canada's intelligence agencies and a role in reviewing their operations.

Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan tabled the proposal yesterday, not long after being officially sworn in as minister of public safety and emergency preparedness after the bill to create her department finally became law.

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Original author: "TASC", tasc at web dot ca Source: TASC Email List Date: April 6, 2005 (please forward far and wide) Human Contact is a Human Right: Demand Monthly Contact Visits for Canada's Secret Trial Detainees:

Mohammad Mahjoub has been able to hug his 2 young children only once in 5 years. Mahmoud Jaballah has six children he is not allowed to kiss or hug. Write or call Ontario's Minister of Community Safety & Correctional Services, Monte Kwinter (see address below), and tell him "Let the children and wives of Mahmoud Jaballah and Mohammad Mahjoub hug their dads and husbands." WHAT'S GOING ON?

Imagine being locked up for years without charge or bail, held on secret evidence, unable to touch, hug or kiss your loved ones. The effect on you is devastating; the effect on your husband or wife and, especially, your young children, is beyond description. Add to this the daily existence of solitary confinement and the threat of deportation to torture, and you have the makings of real, sustained, psychological and emotional torture, both for the detainees and their families. FEDERAL DETAINEES IN PROVINCIAL DETENTION CENTRES

This is the reality for Canada's secret trial detainees and their families. Although the men are federal detainees, they are held in provincial institutions not designed for long-term incarceration.

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Original author: Colin Freeze and Rebecca Caldwell Source: The Globe and Mail URL: [link] Date: April 2, 2005 Pinsent, MacDonald among those raising money for families of alleged terrorists

On Monday night, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Gordon Pinsent and others will take to a downtown Toronto venue and read selections from Franz Kafka's The Trial to raise money for the families of five alleged terrorists. By doing so, these crusaders of Canadian culture will draw a direct parallel between the process used to deport the accused men and the 1925 book chronicling the ordeals of the guiltless Josef K., who in The Trial is arrested, interrogated and finally executed for an alleged crime that is never revealed to him. The Trial helped establish "Kafkaesque" as a synonym for impenetrably oppressive and nightmarish -- and critics have applied the term many times in relation to Canada's controversial security-certificate process. "There's no trial, no evidence; they are there at the minister's pleasure. Their families, meanwhile, are abandoned and living in limbo," said MacDonald in an interview. "There's a very good argument that says that's against Canadian law, that they are being detained illegally, and the security certificate is a bit of a boondoggle. And that's Kafkaesque."

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Source: The Toronto Star URL: N/A Date: April 4, 2005 Editorial: Suppress terror not civil rights

How far is Prime Minister Paul Martin's government prepared to go to fight terror? Too far, if recent signals from Ottawa are any indication. As Canada's anti-terror laws undergo Parliamentary review, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has mused about expanding the federal government's power to slap draconian "control measures" on people suspected of terrorist ties. Cotler has suggested that anyone in Canada, citizen and non-citizen alike, should be subject to the controls. Right now they are applied only to non-Canadians who arrive here, and are found ineligible to stay because they threaten public safety. They can be held in detention until deported, or are held under a kind of house arrest. Consider the case of Adil Charkaoui, one of a handful of such cases. The Morocco-born man came here in 2003, but was deemed a security risk because of his ties to a banned Moroccan terror group that sympathized with Al Qaeda. Charkaoui was denied entry and ordered deported. Rather than go, he chose to spend 21 months in voluntary detention in Montreal, fighting the ruling. These cases take an unreasonably long time to wend their way through the courts.

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We have been informed by Hilary Homes of Amnesty International Canada that they have written another statement condemning Canada's security certificate process. It is front page news on their Web site. Take a look: ~~ link expired ~~

Original author: Colin Perkel (Canadian Press) Source: The Ottawa Sun URL: [link] Date: March 27, 2005 In the name of national security Anti-terror measures draw fire
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Original author: Andrew Duffy Source: The Ottawa Citizen URL: [link] (subscribers only) Date: March 24, 2005 Harkat's wife says 'Oh my God. Oh my God,' Mohamed Harkat repeated upon hearing a judge had labelled him a terrorist based on evidence he was never allowed to see. As he waits to learn his fate, the Algerian native and wife, Sophie, now feel let down by that system, she tells Andrew Duffy.

When told that a Federal Court judge had labelled him a terrorist, Mohamed Harkat banged his head against the glass partition that separated him from his wife, Sophie, at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre. "Oh my God. Oh my God," he repeated as he absorbed the meaning of the judgment. Tuesday's decision by Judge Eleanor Dawson means Mr. Harkat will likely remain in custody while government officials decide whether he can be deported to Algeria, where he believes he will be tortured or killed. Sophie Harkat told the Citizen in an interview yesterday that Tuesday's meeting with her husband was more difficult than the one after his sudden arrest in December 2002. "It was horrible ... for me to face him and tell him he's a terrorist in the eyes of the government," she said yesterday. "We both had faith in the court system; we both believed he could finally be getting out. That was the biggest disappointment."

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