Original author: François Tremblay
Source: The World Socialist Web Site
URL: [link]
Date: September 8, 2007

The Canadian government’s conduct in several affairs suggests that it is systematically abetting, and making use of information gained through, torture. Ottawa continues to deny this publicly, but in judicial proceedings its lawyers have brazenly defended the use of “intelligence” induced by torture.

The best-known and most flagrant case is that of Maher Arar. US authorities, acting on false information sent to the FBI and CIA by the Canadian national security establishment, seized Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, in 2002 as he changed airplanes in New York. Washington subsequently illegally deported Arar, via Jordan, to Syria, where he was imprisoned in a dungeon and tortured. The Canadian government left Arar in the hands of his Syrian torturers for nearly a year, going so far as to exchange information with, and send questions to be put to Arar by, the Syrian secret police.

The case of Adil Charkaoui is another example of Canadian state complicity in torture. Charkaoui is the object of a national security certificate, a ministerial decree which permits, without trial or the need to furnish any evidence, the indefinite imprisonment of a non-citizen (visitor, refugee, or longstanding immigrant) suspected of being a threat to “national security” . Officials have claimed that a reliable source informed them that Charkaoui had trained in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, but long refused to divulge the source’s identity. The source was finally revealed to be Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested at the Canada-US border in 1999 with 58 kg of explosives in his car, allegedly while en route to set them off at Los Angeles International Airport. Last April, Ressam declared that his “confession” incriminating Charkaoui was false and had been made under extreme duress and with the aim of obtaining clemency from his US jailors.

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