Even terrorists have rights, watchdog tells spy service

posted on October 31, 2007 | in Category CSIS | PermaLink

Original author: Colin Freeze Source: The Globe and Mail URL: [link] Date: October 31, 2007 CSIS

Canada's intelligence watchdog has put the country's spies on notice: Even "despicable" terrorists have fundamental rights that must not be ignored. In an usually sharp and detailed public rebuke, the Security Intelligence Review Committee took a principled stand yesterday, by taking Canada's domestic spy service to task for overstepping its powers in a 2002 investigation. In its latest annual report, SIRC complains that Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents with no powers of arrest "arbitrarily detained" a 20-year-old al-Qaeda suspect involved in plotting bombings in Southeast Asia. Once it became clear there were no terrorism charges to lay in Canada, the report says, CSIS encouraged the suspect to cross the border - without reading him his rights, without encouraging him to call a lawyer and without any apparent regard for his right to stay in Canada.Ever since, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah has disappeared into a New York jail. After admitting his ties to al-Qaeda to U.S. authorities, he was secretly convicted of terrorism charges. Five years after the arrest, the Southern District of New York will still not publicly comment on his case.

SIRC, which spent two years investigating the way CSIS handled the Jabarah file, upholds that the suspect is a highly dangerous man.

The committee baldly states that the former St. Catharines resident is "an admitted al-Qaeda member and leader of a terrorist cell that planned to bomb the American and Israeli embassies in Singapore and Manila" before his potentially "catastrophic" plot was thwarted.

SIRC recaps how CSIS officials travelled to the Middle East to pick up Mr. Jabarah after he was stopped there, brought him back to Canada and then encouraged him that it was in his interests to travel south on a "government-owned aircraft." (SIRC points out that, unlike the United States, Canada lacked the capacity to prosecute foreign terrorist plots at the time.)

CSIS officials and various federal ministers had always maintained that Mr. Jabarah freely made his choice to head south. But SIRC, which enlisted the help of a former Supreme Court judge, Gérard La Forest, to sort through the legal issues, says it just doesn't buy the CSIS line.

Given Mr. Jabarah's youth, his emotional state and the fact that he is a Canadian citizen, he deserved better, according to SIRC. "Jabarah is a terrorist, but also a Canadian citizen, and no matter how despicable his actions, the Charter conferred on him certain fundamental rights," the findings conclude. "...Therefore the Service must comply with the Charter in carrying out its investigations."

The watchdog agency felt so strongly about the case it invoked a rarely used power to raise the complaint directly to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day

In an e-mail sent from his office, Mr. Day stated that "our government fully accepts the decision of SIRC in this matter" and added, "it is clear that there are operational improvements that need to be made."

He distanced his administration from earlier Liberal ministers who backstopped CSIS's assertions that it handled the case lawfully and in accordance with its mandate.

"Let me be clear: This all happened under the watch of the previous Liberal government," the statement from Mr. Day said.

© Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.