Combating Terrorism Act 2010, redux, redo

Your government announced today 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 Abu 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-expanded definition of 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 brand a sitting British MP on tour in the US "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.
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Abdelrazik sues Ottawa and Lawrence Cannon for $27-mil

After nearly six years of exile, prison and alleged torture in Sudan "at our request", Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik is suing Ottawa for $24-mil and Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon personally for $3-mil.


Mr. Justice Russel Zinn of the Federal Court ordered the government to bring him home in June after years of cruel cat-and-mouse games with his constitutional rights under both Cons and Libs.

Zinn :"CSIS was complicit in the detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by the Sudanese authorities in 2003."

Despite having been cleared of any wrongdoing by CSIS, the RCMP, and Sudan, for five years Abdelrazik was repeatedly assured by DFAIT that they would grant him an emergency passport only to have them withdraw the offer again under various pretexts. They had no intention of delivering.

From the excellent Paul Koring :

"CSIS agents interrogated Mr. Abdelrazik in a Khartoum prison, offering him – according to Mr. Abdelrazik – freedom if he would help them and warning him if he didn't he would never return home to his family and Sudan would be his "Guantanamo Bay."

In his lawsuit, Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyer claims: “While in Kober prison, he was deprived of sleep, subjected to verbal assaults, pummelled, kicked and flogged with a rubber hose on his back.” At other times he was hanged by his wrists, he said.

"This does not amount to torture or mistreatment. It is the reality in Sudan and he would not have been targeted for mistreatment any more than other fellow detainees," senior Foreign Affairs official Odette Gaudet-Fee said.
Another suggested Mr. Abdelrazik mutilated himself.

It is presumed that CSIS' original interest in Abdelrazik came via Abu Zubaydah, the schizophrenic halfwit waterboarded 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
CSIS has said while it once might have received evidence derived from torture, it no longer does.
Lawrence Cannon really has this one coming.
In July, Abdelrazik asked the federal government to help him get his name removed from a United Nations terror watch list so he could lead a normal life - get a job, healthcare, a bank account. This can only be done with the help of your own government; Cannon suggested Abdelrazik get himself off it.

It seems the only way to get this bunch of crackerbox politicians to obey Canadian law is to take them to court and embarrass them with massive lawsuits.

Had enough of this yet, Canada?
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"This is The Current" with another ad for the terrorism industry

Following his 30 hour journey back to Canada from Sudan on Saturday, Abousfian Abdelrazik did the last six hour journey from Pearson Airport to his home in Montreal by van because "federal officials barred him from the one-hour flight from Toronto". (h/t Dr.Dawg)
A one hour flight entirely within Canadian airspace.

CBC's The Current did not mention this in their segment on Abdelrazik this morning. However in their quest for fair and balanced reporting, they did follow up their interview with Abdelrazik's lawyer Yavar Hameed with one from media terrorism expert and torture advocate Neil Livingstone, introduced only as "Chairman and CEO of the security consulting firm Executive Action and the author of nine books on terrorism."

Mr. Livingstone explained that Abdelrazik was probably incriminated during the "extremely valuable" and "credible" testimony provided "under duress" by Abu Zubaydah and said that CSIS's "sister organizations in the US" have taken note that Canada is "not prepared to go to the mat for Abdelrazik".

From Mr. Livingstone's own description of his company Executive Action :

"Think of us as a McKinsey & Company with muscle, a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges."

Indeed Executive Action boasts former CIA Director James Woolsey and former FBI Director William Sessions on its Senior Advisory Board and claims over 1300 media interviews on terrorism.
From Mr. Livingstone's own bio at Executive Action :

"He predicted the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center on CNBC six months before they occurred, said the terrorists would drop both towers, and that Osama bin Laden would be behind the attacks."

Mr. Livingstone also advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, where his company subsequently won several 'reconstruction' contracts, and is an advocate of destabilising Iran.
Last year in an article on counter-terrorism profiteering - "What did you do in Iran-Contra, Daddy?" - Larisa Alexandrovna traced Livingstone's career back to the Iran Contra affair and the push to establish an Iran-anthrax-al Qaeda link.

I don't expect The Current to have provided all this in their bio of Livingstone, but their propensity for reaching for the nearest rightwing US advocate for the terrorism industry without identifying him as such to comment on Canadian affairs continues to annoy.
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U.N. turning the screws on Abdelrazik

Yesterday, a mere three days after the government announced it will comply with the Federal Court decision ordering it to bring Abdelrazik home, the United Nations Security Council blacklist committee decided to publish their reasons for putting him on its 1267 blacklist back in 2006. The allegations mirror similar charges posted on the U.S. Treasury Board website three years ago. What impeccable timing.

He is, they assure us, "associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban" and "a key member of a Montreal terrorist cell". Their case :

He attempted to go to Chechnya to fight against the Russians - twice - they say.
Really? And we're holding that against him?

He knew Ahmed Ressam, the Millenium Bomber who attempted to attack LAX in 2000.
Yes and as an avowed repudiator of terrorism, Abdelrazik testified against him for the prosecution, an act he could be forgiven for coming to regret in light of how that is turning out for him.

He told one individual that he was "personally acquainted with Osama bin Laden."

He knew Abu Zubaydah, the schizophrenic halfwit waterboarded 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
"That information is the fruit of torture," responded Abdelrazik's lawyer.

Abu Zubaydeh again. Abu Zubaydeh is the sad source of many allegations under torture.
Rather surprised that the UN Security Council 1267 page would have the fucking audacity to bring him up actually, but now that they have, let's go with that :

Abu Zubaydeh's lawyer, Brent Mickum :

Who is Abu Zubaydah? He was born in Saudi Arabia, but is not a Saudi citizen. He was educated in India. Following his university training, he traveled through the United States, considering possible universities where he might pursue his master's degree. In an interview with ABC, former CIA agent John Kiriakou described him as "a very friendly guy" who wrote poetry and was keen to talk about current events and compare the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity. That has been my experience as well.

Like many other young Muslims before him, Zayn ultimately embraced the teachings of the Qur'an and traveled to Afghanistan to fight against communist insurgents who remained after the withdrawal of the Soviet army. In 1992, while fighting on the front lines, he was injured in a motor attack that left him with two pieces of shrapnel that remain embedded in his head to his day. So severe were his injuries that he lost the ability to speak for more than one year. His memory is compromised even today. He cannot remember his mother's name or picture her face. He cannot remember his father's name, but recalls that he looked like a prominent movie star in the Arab community. Although Zayn ran a news agency with a partner, he cannot remember his former partner's name.

Later, when Zayn returned to the front lines, he was told that he was no longer fit for fighting because couldn't remember how to shoot.

Zayn was never a member or a supporter of any armed forces that were allied against the United States. He had no weapon when he was taken into illegal custody. He never took up arms against the United States nor against its coalition allies. He was not picked up on a battlefield in Afghanistan at the time of his detention, but was taken into custody in Pakistan, where he was wrongfully attacked, shot, and nearly killed. So serious were his wounds that a surgeon from John Hopkins University was flown to Pakistan to perform emergency surgery to save the life of a man the Bush administration believed to be the number three man in al Qaeda."

We await the UN Security Council's explanation on why all their hardwon resolutions against torture should be laid aside to countenance the torturing of a halfwit on behalf of US colonialism.
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Abdelrazik is expected to land back in Canada on Saturday, accompanied on the flight by his lawyer, a Foreign Affairs official and two RCMP.
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Dear Minister Lawrence Cannon :

I write in support of Abousfian Abdelrazik's constitutionally and internationally unchallengeable right to return to Canada.

I write also as a Canadian citizen whose conscience has been shocked by cascading revelations, in the courts and press of the U.S., the UK, and here at home, of the role played by Western governments, among them my own, in clear and extreme violations of international law, many of those violations rising to the level of war crimes.

Anyone with an internet account can discover in minutes that continuing American claims about Mr Abdelrazik rest on testimony from the Saudi Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, whose torture before and since has been attested to by the ICRC and the FBI. The most credible FBI witnesses have also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to their doubts about Abu Zubaydah's status with regard to al-Qaeda and about his mental capacity, even before he was tortured.

The UN Security Council's 1267 Committee have said that Mr Abdelrazik is free to fly home to Canada. We know that the only testimony against him is historically, tragically tainted.

I often wonder whether members of my own government or of the departments and agencies that act in the name of the sovereign citizens of Canada, all of us represented by our queen, and thus all of us more permanent than you, superior to you, have noticed the water rising about the ankles of American public servants, former and current, who seem to have grown up ignorant of the jurisprudence we inherited from Nuremberg 1945-46. Rationalizing war crimes itself becomes a crime, and I doubt that Canadians in time to come will judge anyone who committed such crimes in our name in kindly fashion.

Mr Abdelrazik has a paid airline reservation to return to Canada on 12 June, and an appointment with the Hon. Mr Justice Zinn on 7 July. I appeal to you to respect both Canadian and international law, and to end the bizarre melodrama of my government's inexplicably duplicitous dealings with another Canadian citizen.

Please just stand aside, and allow Mr Abdelrazik to fly home.

Yours sincerely,
Skdadl at POGGE
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A superb letter, isn't it?

Send yours to :

Lawrence Cannon
Telephone: (613) 992-5516.. Fax: (613) 992-6802
Email: CannoL@parl.gc.ca

because you can bet the Cons will mount some fetid embarrassing appeal of Justice Zinn's decision on the grounds that you don't give a shit what happens to other Canadian citizens.

First they came for some brown guy based on evidence obtained by waterboarding a schizophrenic half-wit 83 times, but I did not speak out because ...
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UN : Canada 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."

G&M : 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.

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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.

Harper's quest to turn Canada into an outpost of apology for the worst crimes of the Bush era shames us all.

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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 update again when he returns from Friday's hearing.

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Canada oks torture intel on Abdelrazik

G&M : "More than 16 months after Canada's security agencies cleared Abousfian Abdelrazik, government lawyers are now pressing him to admit to being a senior al-Qaeda operative, echoing American accusations apparently extracted from Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaeda leader water boarded more than 80 times under the Bush administration."


POGGE : "While the rest of the world is coming to terms with the fact that the Bush administration was actually using torture to elicit false confessions in an effort to justify their invasion of Iraq, the Hapless Government™ is trying to use statements from a man who was waterboarded 83 times to prove that Abdelrazik is a terrorist."


In a March appearance before the public safety committee, CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian caused a media stir by refusing to unequivocally deny Canadian intelligence agencies' reliance on foreign intel obtained via torture. "Clarifications" were demanded and obtained, the media was apparently placated, and it all went away.

Indeed CSIS Director Jim Judd, appearing before the public safety committee on April 3, said :

"In the past we used information received obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We've changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason."

and went on to emphasize that intelligence agencies take direction from the federal government. CSIS has also called for a formal probe into its role in the Abdelrazik affair to clear its name.

But here is what Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan actually said when he appeared before the same committee to offer his "clarification" on torture:

"We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture."

Knowingly. Also known as "don't ask don't tell intel".

The rest of us have known of Abu Zubaydah's torture just to provide a pretext for invading Iraq since April 19, so this is perhaps not the best week for the Canadian government to air its filthy laundry in a Federal court on its role in condoning intel possibly derived from torture to prevent a Canadian citizen from returning home after he has been cleared by CSIS, the RCMP, and Sudan.
And, as pointed out by Lib Andrew Kania at the same public safety committee cited above, this also sends out a message to other governments that if they're selling info derived from torture, we're buying.
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Update : Dr. Dawg and James Bow
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