Canada on torture : We're buying if you're selling

Canada's collateral fallout from Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee summary on the torture of prisoners at CIA “black site” prisons around the world.

"A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s office said Wednesday that Canada does not engage in, or condone, torture by national security agencies but ...  Canada will act on “a tip from any source” if Canadians’ lives are in danger."

This is our usual "we're buying if you're selling" approach to torture.

Feb. 2012 : "The latest directive says in "exceptional circumstances" where there is a threat to human life or public safety, urgency may require CSIS to "share the most complete information available at the time with relevant authorities, including information based on intelligence provided by foreign agencies that may have been derived from the use of torture or mistreatment."

April 2010 :  Day One of Omar Khadr's trial at Guantanamo. Confessions elicited via sleep deprivation, denial of pain medication, stress positions, being forced to urinate on himself and being used as a human mop, being terrorized by barking dogs, and being threatened with rape and torture. Khadr's defence team was only allowed to interview three of Khadr's 30 interrogators at Bagram and Gitmo, two of whom admit the 15 year old Khadr was threatened with rape.

FBI agent Robert Fuller

"... elicited from Khadr the identification of another Canadian, Maher Arar, who Khadr during interviews by Fuller claimed was training with al Qaeda operatives at a training camp at a time that, it later turned out, Arar was actually at home in Canada.

"In contrast to testimony he gave Monday, [FBI]special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar." 

Shortly after Fuller reported the identification of Arar to the government, Arar was apprehended at JFK airport and rendered to Syria for interrogation there.

FBI agent Fuller also got Khadr to confess to throwing a grenade at US forces."

December 2009 : Harper shuts down parliament for two months in what turned out to be a successful strategy to muzzle parliamentarians regarding Richard Colvin's testimony about the torture of random Afghan farmers and taxi drivers under Canadian watch. 

Harper hired Bruce Carson to "stickhandle" the Afghan file "on a daily basis, involving senior officials from departments such as foreign affairs, defence, RCMP, justice and corrections". In 2007 a requisition for special boots to allow Correctional Services Canada inspection teams to wade through blood and shit in Afghan prisons was made public.

I think it's fair to say any report similar to the US Senate summary made partially public on Tuesday would never see the light of day in Canada.

April 2009 : "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 extracted from Abu Zubaydah, water boarded more than 80 times under the Bush administration."

As noted by POGGE at the time : 

"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."

March 2009 : The same day that CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian told the public safety committee there is no absolute ban on using intelligence that may have been obtained from countries with questionable human rights records on torture, RCMP spokesman Gilles Michaud tells the same committee :

"I want to be clear here - there is no absolute ban on the use of any information by the RCMP."

November 2006 : CSIS director Jim Judd said it had done nothing wrong by accepting as genuine the confession of Maher Arar, who was secretly and illegally bundled off by extraordinary rendition to a prison in Syria where he was held and tortured for a year.

"It does not necessarily follow that because a country has a poor human rights record that any information received from it was the product of torture," Judd told Parliament's public safety committee.

G&M : "In an Oct. 16, 2003 e-mail marked “secret,” officials of the intelligence unit of Foreign Affairs note that CSIS agents will pass on details of their then just-completed interrogation of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo and planned to “send two officers to Sudan next week to interview Abdelrazik.” 

Dec. 9, 2014 CBC : "This is a report of the United States Senate," Harper told the House of Commons on Tuesday. "It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada."
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Update : Tom Tomorrow
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Inside the Senate Committee on National Security

On Monday the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence heard from the watchdogs of both CSIS and CSEC - Chuck Strahl, Chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), and CSEC Commissioner Jean-Pierre Plouffe.

Here Plouffe is explaining to Senator Romeo Dallaire why Justice Mosley slapped down CSIS for outsourcing their spying to their Five Eyes partners (US, UK, NZ, and Australia) via CSEC. Plouffe :

"CSIS has a jurisdiction which is limited to Canada, whereas CSE's jurisdiction reaches abroad. So CSIS, in accomplishing its activities, believes it has need of assistance from allies abroad and in order to obtain this, CSIS has to go through CSE because CSE deals directly with allies. In Justice Mosley's decision, CSIS asked for assistance from CSE because both individuals in question were abroad. And what happened is unfortunately CSIS did not disclose to Justice Mosley that they sought assistance from Five Eyes. So it is legal for CSE to call on the Five Eyes, however in this case there was a warrant from the court that specified it be within Canada not abroad. Mosley said CSIS was lacking in candor and good faith." 

Plouffe added this has "complicated" CSEC's relationship with the NSA and other partners.
The impression you get from listening to Plouffe is that the Five Eyes partners share just about anything and everything, with the Canadian contact being CSEC.

CSIS watchdog Chuck Strahl addressed this as problem for the privacy of Canadians, saying "we must put legal caveats on CSIS/CSE-generated intel" shared with Five Eyes partners and third parties :

 "CSIS is concerned with erosion of control of intelligence given to CSEC and by extension to the Five Eyes community." 

"CSIS has developed information privacy protocols with only one Five Eyes partner."

While Strahl doesn't reveal which Five Eyes partner it is we do have a privacy protocol with, a 2009 Memo of Understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart does mention one between NSA and Canada. This was the Snowden-leaked doc which revealed an NSA agreement purporting to share raw unfiltered intelligence data with Israel, who is not a Five Eyes member, with the proviso that Israel weed out intel about Americans and other Five Eyes citizens .

Or as Strahl put it : "A Five Eyes partner may act independently on CSIS-originated info."

He said his office was limited to the oversight of CSIS and so his investigators were unable to follow threads that led into CSEC. Likewise Plouffe said his office could not stray into investigating CSIS. 

This was not, Strahl said, what O'Connor and Iacobucci had in mind when they each recommended a joint oversight, adding there is "no provision in current legislation, which is 30 years old, for parliamentary oversight", the only Five Eyes partner not to have any.

On Abdelrazik, Strahl said CSIS created an "exaggerated threat assessment" and "inappropriately disclosed classified information". 

The senators seemed far more concerned with what new measures had been put in place to prevent a "Snowden nightmare" in Canada than in the content his leaks revealed. They didn't ask a single question of Plouffe or Strahl about spying on the G20 in Canada and Brazil or allowing the NSA to build backdoors into internet encryption under our watch.

Not one.

For his part, Strahl said "Snowden has caused us to question how we work and that's good."

Asked what possessed him to come out of retirement last year to head up SIRC, Strahl laughed and said it was classified. 

I'll bet. SIRC has had an interim chair since the former SIRC chair and fraudster appointed by Harper, Dr. Arthur Porter, resigned in disgrace in 2011.

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Dec 20 Update : Plouffe's explanation above - on Justice Mosley chastising CSEC/CSIS for outsourcing their spying on Canadians to Five Eyes partners - goes public :

CSIS asked foreign agencies to spy on Canadians, kept court in dark, judge says

Canada's spy agencies chastised for duping courts

Canada’s spy agencies have deliberately misled judges to expand their eavesdropping powers unlawfully

Update : Senate Committee transcript up.
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Steve and the multinational man of mystery

I do hope someone is securing the rights to make a Made In Canada thriller about Stephen Harper's spy watchdog and his various business associates.

I'm referring of course to the Honorable Dr. Arthur Porter, "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone" and also "Member, Queen’s Privy Council for Canada” for life.

Really, this cast of characters has everything -  spies, dictators, terrorists, Russians, drug cartels, arms dealers, diamond mines, bribery, money laundering.  

Here's a storyboard to get you started ...

2008 : Dr. Arthur Porter is appointed to five-member CSIS watchdog committee, SIRC, on recommendation of PMO. 

June 2009  SIRC committee member Arthur Porter appointed to lead investigation into complaint CSIS 'was complicit in the detention' of Abdelrazik" six years previously.
Investigation goes nowhere.

June 2010  Porter promoted to Chair of SIRC by Harper

Also in June 2010, Porter wired $200,000 in personal funds to former Israeli agent and international lobbyist/arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe to secure a $120-million grant from Russia to build Russian port facilities in Porter's native Sierra Leone where his family have diamond mining interests. The offshore payment was made via one of Porter's private companies, the Africa Infrastructure Group, but the deal fell through. 
Mr. Ben-Menashe was charged in the US in 1989 with illegally attempting to sell three military transport airplanes to Iran but acquitted on the grounds he was acting on official Government of Israel business. 

Ben-Menashe testified he had personally witnessed George H. W. Bush attend a meeting with members of the Iranian government in Paris in October 1980, as part of a covert Republican Party operation — the so-called October Surprise — to have the 52 U.S hostages then held in Iran remain there until President Jimmy Carter, who was negotiating their release, had lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan.

His house in Montreal was fire-bombed this past December.

During Porter's 2004 -2011 tenure as CEO at McGill University Health Centre, two former top executives at SNC-Lavalin allegedly authorized $22.5 million in payments related to getting the contract for a $1.3-billion superhospital expansion to Porter who was head of the selection committee. Payments were made to Sierra Asset Management Inc in the Bahamas at a bank run by a business associate of Porter's.

Nov 2011 Porter resigned from SIRC following the NaPo story on his dealings with Ben-Menashe and a month later from his position as CEO of McGill University Health Centre, where he left behind $300,000 in personal debts and a hospital with a $115-million deficit .
According to the McGill Daily, Porter sold the condo McGill fronted him half a million bucks to buy without paying back the $800,000 loan on the place.

Feb 2013 Arrest warrants issued for Porter for defrauding the government, accepting bribes, and money laundering in connection with alleged SNC Lavalin $22-million kickback to Porter via Sierra Assets Management to secure the hospital contract.  Also on the arrest warrant :

• Former MUHC director Yanai Elbaz.
• Former CEO of SNC-Lavalin Pierre Duhaime
• Former SNC-Lavalin VP Riadh Ben Aissa, in jail in Switzerland for the past year on suspicion of making bribes in return for contracts in Libya
• Jeremy Morris, Sierra Asset Management, Bahamas, 

SNC-Lavalin signed a deal to award Sierra Assets Management, formed in November 2009, 3 payments totaling $10-million for consultancy fees regarding a gas project in Algeria. The $1.2 billion Rhourde Nouss gas project deal was awarded to SNC  the same year by Sonatrach, Algeria’s national oil company.
Last Monday Algerian police raided SNC offices in Algiers regarding "allegations of bribery and kickbacks involving Sonatrach and public officials and agents hired by SNC-Lavalin to procure a number of large infrastructure projects."
FINTRAC, the Canadian federal agency that monitors money laundering, is investigating a trail of SNC payments to Porter and later Sierra Asset Management from 2007 to June 2012, six months after Porter left MUHC.


On May 27 Porter and his wife were arrested in Panama and are fighting extradition to Canada. Porter has stated he is too ill to leave his home in the Bahamas to fly all the way to Montreal to face charges, however he was seemingly well enough to embark on a business trip 1½ times that distance from Bahamas to Antigua, but was unfortunately nabbed en route in Panama.

Porter's Panamanian lawyer, Ricardo Bilonick Paredes, a former ambassador of Panama, testified at Manuel Noriega's 1991 trial that he :

"acted as a middleman between Manuel Noriega and Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s ... passing millions of dollars in bribes to Noriega, in exchange for the ability to fly planes packed with tons of cocaine from Panama to the United States."

Dr. Karol Sikora, Porter’s business partner at his medical cancer clinic in the Bahamas, was hired by the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 to give a medical opinion on the condition of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrah - in prison for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.  Sikora secured al-Megrah's release from prison on compassionate grounds, testifying that he only had 3 months to live. Al-Megrahi lived another three years .

Currently Sikora is arguing Porter's self-diagnosed stage four lung cancer means he will not live long enough to stand trial.

Some have questioned how Steve could have displayed the poor judgement to appoint Dr. Arthur Porter, multinational man of mystery, to head up a sensitive position at SIRC giving him access to both Canadian and American intelligence.

You're kidding me, right?

May22 2014 update : National Post :
Arthur Porter and associate split $22.5M payout in ‘biggest corruption fraud in the history of Canada,’ Quebec inquiry hears

SNC-Lavalin made threats against Spanish bid rival

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Harper's parade of perps

Notable how many of Steve's patronage peeps are grifters, conmen, or alleged perps .

Starting from the left ... picture updated to include Pierre Poutine and the robocon network [h/t Beijing York in comments] - no charges and no arrests, 21 months and counting... 

Dr. Arthur Porter, "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone", also Harper-appointed chair of CSIS watchdog SIRC and lead investigator into CSIS' treatment of Abdelrazik. Money once paid to former Israeli arms trafficker to sell infrastructure deals to Sierra Leone, and now subject of an arrest warrant for fraud, money laundering and bribes/kickbacks in connection with SNC Lavelin's successful bid to build a $1.3-billion hospital in Montreal.
Viv Toews, minister responsible for CSIS and SIRC, says somehow it's the fault of the NDP and Libs.

Senator Mike Duffy, Harper-appointed lollypop, whose very useful 2008 election coverage included running Stephane Dion's three time stumbled interview restarts 5 days before election day. Duffy now being investigated for his housing expenses as a senator due to apparently having no idea which province he lives in.

Bruce Carson, Harper's "The Fixer". A lawyer disbarred for fraud in the 80's, Carson was charged last year with influence peddling on behalf of his 22-year-old ex-callgirl fiancee - the only bit anyone remembers - to sell water purifiers to First Nations and lobbying for a $25 million government grant within 5 years of leaving government. 

Senator Patrick Brazeau, 38, suspended from the Senate he barely attended with full salary. Dodgy alleged financial record going into the Senate, now highlighted by sexual assault arrest and an investigation into questionable Senate housing expenses. 

Tom Flanagan, Harper's one-time Calgary School mentor and election mastermind. Fired from CBC and on leave from U of Calgary till retirement since yesterday for framing the watching of child pornography as a victimless crime and an issue of 'personal liberty'. Accused Paul Martin of supporting child pornography during 2004 election. Toast but his legacy lives on.

Con MP Rahim Jaffer, once Harper's Chair of Con Caucus. Ran election campaign ads accusing Jack Layton of being soft on marijuana. When Jaffer arrested for drunk driving, cops and defense lawyers couldn't agree whether the cocaine was in Jaffer's pants pocket or in his jacket pocket so he got off.

Nathan Jacobson, busted in the US in 2008 for fraud, $46-million in money laundering, and running online no-prescription pharmacies, but neglected to tell his Canadian hosts he was a fugitive due back in US to serve his sentence. Arrested in Toronto last October. 
Nice photos of Jacobson with Harper and Benjamin Netanyahu presumably no longer available on government website. 

As noted at DJ, Con propaganda machine stressed to the breaking point here but Steve still scraping them off when and only when their public behavior becomes an embarrassment. 
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A further updated picture : Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks

Update : Collect the whole set!
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Another thrilling episode of Beyond the Border

In this week's episode, Steve lays a cunning trap for Barry. In exchange for agreeing to pass travel and "informal" info about Canadians on to Homeland Security, Steve gets Barry to promise to maybe match $1-billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars to fund some pilot projects sometime in the future that will principally benefit the 40% of Canada-US corporations that rely on a cross-border supply chain. Will Barry take the bait?

Well you can clearly see the advantage to Canada here. If US security dudes are openly operating in Canada, never again will the RCMP suffer the humiliation of delivering a Canadian citizen to the US border so he can be tried and jailed in the US for acts committed and not considered criminal in Canada.  So there's that.

And "informal information exchange", ie unsubstantiated spook-thinks about brown Canadians with funny names like Abdelrazik and Arar, has clearly worked out really well in previous informal information exchanges.

From the Canadian Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan:

Canada and the United States have a long history of working together to defend the freedoms and rights of our citizens and to deal with threats to our collective way of life. Cross-border cooperation and information sharing are crucial to these efforts.

See how that works?
None of that old "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" nonsense. It's all the same thing now - it's "collective". And if we have to pitch a few more hippies/troublemakers/brown peoples into the gaping maw of US security paranoia, well that's just a price we're willing to pay to keep those trucks rolling back and forth over the border.

Most of the TV and print media commentary in favour of this latest episode of Beyond the Border has come from Canada-US Project luminaries Derek Burney, Colin Robertson, and Fen Osler Hampson, whose Blueprint for Canada-US Engagement appears to be the blueprint for Steve and Barry's deal. They say it will be very good for Canada and is in no way a threat to our sovereignty, a defence which would be rather more reassuring had Hampson not made a pitch to the Foreign Affairs committee in 2009 in favour of dropping the national border altogether.
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Everybody loves a SIRCus

In response to media reports that CSIS had been complicit in the detention of Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan, outgoing CSIS director Jim Judd requested that CSIS watchdog and review panel, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, "investigate and report on the performance of the Service’s [CSIS's] duties and functions with respect to the case of Abousofian Abdelrazik at the earliest opportunity". That was in March 2009.

Three months later Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn ruled that CSIS was indeed "complicit in the detention" of Abdelrazik in Sudan. Then in September of this year, newly released CSIS documents revealed the spy agency's attempts to delay Abdelrazik's return to Canada long enough for the CIA to spirit him off to Guantanamo, even as Foreign Affairs diplomats were arranging for his return, making this the biggest known Canadian  intelligence agency scandal since Maher Arar.

So how's that full investigation by SIRC requested by Judd coming along then? 

Dead in the water apparently.

Steve promoted Dr. Arthur Porter, the SIRC committee member charged with leading the Abdelrazik investigation, to chair of the committee in June last year, and then accepted his resignation this month following a NaPo story regarding Dr Porter's offshore cash payment to a former Israeli arms trafficker - now acting as a lobbyist for the Russian Federation - to sell infrastructure deals to Sierra Leone where Porter has mining interests and holds the title of "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone".

"I wish to state for the record that I have fulfilled with diligence my mandate," 

wrote Dr. Porter in his letter of resignation to Steve.


... which got me to wondering just what was so gosh-darned important in SIRC's mandate last year that it bumped the Abdelrazik investigation requested by CSIS right off the list.

From the Security Intelligence Review Committee 2010-2011 Annual Report
Checks and Balances : Viewing Security Intelligence Through the Lens of Accountability

The Lens of Accountability interested itself in five SIRC-initiated reviews and three public complaints.
The Reviews :

~ a pitch for "retooloing" SIRC to allow for "independent review" of Canada's other intelligence agencies as well as CSIS

~ "SIRC also followed through on its commitment to pay close attention to CSIS’s expanding foreign investigative activities. Although overseas operations unfold in unique circumstances and present different challenges, CSIS should strive to ensure that the management of its operations abroad mirrors, to the extent practicable, the standards of administration and account­ability that are maintained domestically."

~ "Today the Service is also reaching out to non-traditional partners, such as the private sector."

"In SIRC’s opinion, an effective strategy would involve identifying those sectors with the greatest potential to be of investigative value to the Service. ... the Service strives to engage and support the private sector’s security needs in other ways. Efforts are also underway to increase the number of security clearances for individuals in the private sector."

~ "an appreciation of the way in which the internet supports CSIS’s activities"
although it notes :

" At issue was the volume of information pertaining to young people being retained by CSIS as part of its operational reporting."

~ A positive review of CSIS’s cooperation "with a “Five Eyes” partner" - which could be either the US, UK, Australia, or NZ.

Note to SIRC : If you have to use evasive terminology like "a Five Eyes partner" in your "positive review" rather than actually name the country you are feeling positive about, it's not really much of a public account, is it?

~ "a positive impression of RCMP–CSIS cooperation"

"The relationship between CSIS and the RCMP, in particular, has moved to the forefront following the passage of the Anti-terrorism Act (2001). As a result of this legislation, CSIS and the RCMP have had to work more closely together"

~ "Canada is experiencing levels of espionage compa­rable to the height of the Cold War."

~ Afghan detainees.

" In particular, SIRC’s review found no indication that in the period during which CSIS conducted detainee interviews, CSIS officers posted to Afghanistan had any first-hand knowledge of the alleged abuse, mistreatment or torture of detainees by Afghan authorities."

however :

"SIRC noted that CSIS did not comprehen­sively document its role in the interviews of Afghan detainees by keeping records that would confirm the numbers and details of all of the detainee interviews"

SIRC also handles citizen complaints against CSIS. This year three were investigated and written up, which included the following complaints :
CSIS failing to identify itself as CSIS, harrassment of family members, suggesting to interviewee that a lawyer was not necessary, delay in providing security assessment for a site access, and allegedly providing an "unjust, unfounded, and unethical" assessment to Citizenship and Immigration Canada regarding  a complainant's application for permanent  resident status.

Aside from providing some gentle advice, like that in its reports to Citizenship and Immigration Canada "the Service not include certain information unless it has been corroborated", SIRC did not find anything unduly alarming in its public report of the three out of 48 new and carried-over complaints.


I'm sure the four out of five health industry experts that comprise SIRC's review panel on CSIS did the best they could with their unwieldy $3-million Lens of Accountability. Unfortunately that lens is looking the other way in the case Abousfian Abdelrazik, the largest CSIS intelligence scandal since Maher Arar.
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Update : SIRC reviewed CSIS re Abdelrazik for their 2012-2013 report, covering the period from March 2003 to December 2004. 
It found "no indication that CSIS had requested Sudanese authorities to arrest or detain Abousfian Abdelrazik" , but that "CSIS inappropriately and, in contravention of CSIS policy, disclosed personal and classified information." Further, "in mid-2004 in preparation for Mr. Abdelrazik’s possible release, SIRC found that CSIS assessments to its government partners contained exaggerated and inaccurately conveyed information" and that "CSIS excessively reported, and hence retained in its operational databases, a significant amount of information not related to the threat, originating from individuals who were not targets."
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CSIS recycles old leaks slagging Abdelrazik, Charkaoui

A leaked 2004 CSIS report from LaPresse on Thursday purports to be a summary of a conversation between Abousfian Abdelrazik and Adil Charkaoui  in 2000 in which they plotted to blow up an airplane enroute between Montreal and France. It has already been enthusiastically repeated across our national press :
CBC : CSIS file reveals plot to bomb plane: La Presse
Gosh, CBC, your previous nice pix of Abdelrazik and Charkaoui are now replaced by scary ones
G&M : Abdelrazik and Charkaoui plotted plane bomb: report
AFP : Two Canada terror suspects plotted France attack: report

etc. ... etc. ...
Never mind that this 'news' was already reported nearly two years ago after a federal court judge annulled Charkaoui's security certificate because government lawyers refused the judge's order to reveal their wiretap evidence, citing "security concerns".
About now you are probably wondering what kind of "security concerns" trumps giving evidence about someone you allege was plotting to blow up a plane.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney :

"I read the protected confidential dossiers on such individuals, and I can tell you that, without commenting on any one individual, some of this intelligence makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he said. “I just think people should be patient and thoughtful and give the government and its agencies the benefit of the doubt."

The re-leak has nonetheless been greeted with skepticism by Boris, Dr. Dawg, Pogge, Sixth Estate and no doubt many others because we all remember previous security leaks from government officials who are more than happy to anonymously rejig conveniently-timed select bits of complete bullshit to a cooperative media.


Let's review just the anonymous bullshit security leaks about Maher Arar for instance, for which no public officials were ever called to account and who are presumably still happily at it.

In 2002 while Arar was being tortured in Syria, an anonymous official source linked Arar to "a suspected member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network." That suspected member was Abdullah Almalki - later cleared by the Iacobucci inquiry.

Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar :

CanWest bureau chief Robert Fife, July 24, 2003 :"Terror threats in Ottawa: Two kinds of fear: Report says
Syrian intelligence helped U.S. to foil al-Qaeda plot on target in Ottawa : One official would only tell CanWest News Service that Mr. Arar, a 36-year-old Ottawa engineer, is a 'very bad guy' who apparently received military training at an Al-Qaeda base. "

As noted by Justice O'Connor in the report : "the apparent purpose behind this leak is not attractive: to attempt to influence public opinion against Mr. Arar at a time when his release from imprisonment in Syria was being sought by the government of Canada"
Coincidentally the sudden re-issuing of this "new" leak about blowing up planes happens to coincide with Abdelrazik's attempt to get his name off the UN 1267 terror list this month.
To continue :

G&M, Oct 10, 2003 : unnamed Canadian government sources said that Mr. Arar had been “roughed up,” but not tortured, while in detention in Syria

CTV, Oct. 23, 2003 : “senior government officials in various departments” said that Mr. Arar had provided information to the Syrians about al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and cells operating in Canada.

Juliet O'Neill, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 2003 : “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to al-Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.”

Fife : Dec. 30, 2003 : "US, Canada '100% sure' Arar trained with al-Qaeda" : “a senior Canadian intelligence source said the United States had an extensive dossier on Mr. Arar and that “if the Americans were ever to declassify the stuff, there would be some hair standing on end."

Toronto Star : Learning from media mistakes in Arar case May 2009 :

"Unnamed officials also told Craig Oliver at CTV News that Arar was only released because he had given information to the Syrians about Al Qaeda and about other Canadians suspected of terrorism activities. Oliver later explained that he felt the story was credible because his sources were senior officials in two different government departments. Nonetheless, years after the Arar inquiry's report, he apologized to Arar in person for running the story. He also told him of an offer he had turned down – a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan. As he describes: "The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source... This experience has made me more skeptical... I knew these people very well."

So you'll have to forgive the rest of us if we also share Craig Oliver's reluctance to be conned into accepting any more conveniently-timed leaks and smears from anonymous security officials who for all we know are the same ones who previously set out to turn public opinion against Arar even as they destroyed his life for reasons they have yet to account for.
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Labour unions hire Abdelrazik

In defiance of a UN edict making it illegal to hire Abousfian Abdelrazik and to put pressure on our government to get him off that 1267 terrorist blacklist, the Canadian Labour Congress will hire Abdelrazik for a week, while the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the International Association of Machinists will each hire him for a day. They are hiring him to tell his story, which will presumably include his being kept an exile inside his own country.

The Canadian government froze his assets in accordance with the UN list earlier this year, although they are permitting him to have an allowance from it, but he is still not permitted to work.

Here, by the way, is what the UN Security Council 1267 page has on Abdelrazik. Good grief. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon maintains it's up to Abdelrazik to get himself off the list, although no one has yet succeeded in getting off it without the help of their government.

After Abdelrazik was arrested in Sudan at the bequest of the CSIS in 2003, he was imprisoned for twenty months during which time he was beaten and tortured and later interrogated by two CSIS agents. Abdelrazik says he also remembers being questioned in Sudan by Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, who questioned him about Osama bin Laden and what he thought of Israel.

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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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The Afghan torture coverup is going well

It's funny the things that stick with you.

What I remember when Canada's treatment of Afghan prisoners comes up is not Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin's 2007 report on allegations of electrocution and beatings, or the entire households detained because someone got the address wrong. What I remember is this simple request for desert camel boots made by Stockwell Day's newly arrived leader of the Correctional Service Canada inspections team in February 2007 :

"They afford the appropriate ankle support when getting in and out of the LAV/Coyote/Nyala vehicles. Additionally the colour is more appropriate in the summer heat. On a Health and Safety level we will be walking through blood and fecal matter when either on patrol or in the prison and should not be wearing our personal footwear as it will track into our personal quarters."

As Skdadl said at the time :

"I think we call this the banality of evil. I have to walk through blood and fecal material, so I need better boots. This is the road to Nuremberg, folks. And this is being done in our name. Everyone happy to sit here quietly and be a "Good Canadian"? "

Richard Colvin wasn't. As political director at the Canadian-run provincial reconstruction base in 2006 when troops began handing over prisoners to Afghanistan's notorious intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate, he is one of the only government witnesses who wants to testify at the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry into whether military police officers had a duty to investigate the transfer of detainees when there were allegations of torture in Afghan prisons.

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A week ago federal lawyers invoked a national security clause in Canada's Anti-terrorism Act that effectively prevents him from doing so.

They argue that on the one hand Colvin's testimony is not relevant, and on the other that his testimony would breach "national security considerations".

As we have seen previously with Arar, Abdelrazik, Almalki, Suaad Mohammud, Charkaoui, and Harkat, this is a government that flagrantly makes use of "national security considerations" to cover its own complicity in wrongdoing.

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Last Wednesday National Defence said some witnesses might be able to give some information, as long as the commission proves the testimony is relevant. This is impossible for the commission to do as Michel Gauthier, the retired lieutenant-general who was in charge of the country's overseas command until last spring, as well as three former ground commanders in Kandahar and members of Corrections Canada have all refused their subpoenas to meet with commission investigators.

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A week ago Canada's former top military police officer, retired navy captain Steve Moore, advised he had documents that he wanted to turn over to the inquiry, however Mr. Moore and his lawyer had to sign a pledge preventing them from passing the documents to the inquiry.
The documents first have to be reviewed to remove sensitive information– such as logs showing that Canadian military police opened investigations into whether detainees risked torture – but won't be declassified in time for the hearings.

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As if this wasn't sufficient obstruction, the chair of the inquiry, Peter Tinsley, has been let go on Dec 11, before his investigation can be completed and despite his request to be allowed to continue. Then on Monday public proceedings were postponed :

"after federal lawyers bombarded the agency with a series of motions demanding further delay and questioning, among other things, the jurisdiction of the commission".

MacKay told the House of Commons on Monday that "a search for a new chair is underway".

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Isn't this exactly what was done at Guantanamo? If the government didn't like the way a military investigation into the detainment of an individual prisoner was going, they just fired the presiding judge or lawyer and appointed another.

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Last word goes to Richard Colvin's lawyer on the use of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act to muzzle her client :

"The legislation was addressed at combatting terrorism-related activities. It was not intended to be used tactically to intimidate witnesses from giving evidence in administrative proceedings carried out by government-created bodies," the letter said.

"The interests of justice are not served when an ordinary witness such as Mr. Colvin is threatened by the Department of Justice with severe penalty for abiding by the terms of a subpoena served on him.".

Update : Good short history of a year's worth of sidelining the investigation : Dr. Dawg.

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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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