Omar Khadr - Day One in the kangaroo court

Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights Watch is interviewed as she leaves the courtroom on Day 1 of Obama's first big pretrial for a military commission into the possible terrorist actions of a 15 year old.

Terrible sound, I know, but well worth it for her explanation of how after Khadr has been tortured to confess at Bagram, the "clean team" comes in and tries to elicit the same 'confessions' under friendlier conditions so that the new clean confessions will be admissable in court.

A word about Khadr's confessions under torture. According to Eviator, CIA 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.

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

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

Well so much for 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 has only been 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.

In the vid above Eviatar also mentions no one knowing what the rules are. This is because Secretary of Defense Robert Gates only signed off on and issued the 2009 Manual for the Military Commissions Act on Wednesday night 12 hours before the pretrial began, meaning that no one involved had time to read it beforehand and consequently no one knew what the rules were. After a four hour adjournment to read it, now they can't agree on whether or not the US Constitution applies.

Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense council : "We don’t know what the law is."

You don't really have one, sir. That's why it's called a kangaroo court - it leaps over the law to a foregone conclusion. That's the whole point.

Correction from CIA to FBI, courtesy of Skdadl at POGGE

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Inside the International Trade Committee

Debate on the Canada-Colombia FTA resumed at the International Trade Committee today with the Chair stating he wasn't going to allow a whole lot of witnesses to testify just so they could put it on their resume. Very classy, Mr. Chair.

Today's first witness today was Yessika Hoyos Morales, lawyer, Colombian human rights activist, and the daughter of a murdered trade unionist.

Paramilitaries are still in place in 293 Colombian municipalities, she said, and the Office of the Public Prosecutor, as of Sept 2009, has been carrying out investigations into 2,077 executions of people killed by the national army.

While the government has announced an effort to protect trade unionists and human rights people, the Department of Administrative Security scandal has put paid to that. DAS infiltrated human rights groups and then passed lists on to paramilitary groups to target their members, including judges, with intimidation and murder. Ironically, DAS is now promising to work with these same human rights groups to produce human rights reports for Colombia as part of Canada's FTA conditions.


Gauri Sreenivasan, Canadian Council for International Co-operation, was next up. CCIC believes in the potential of trade agreements to lift people out of poverty, she said, but not this agreement. Why, she asked, is the violence in Colombia always spoken of in terms of fights between rival drug gangs with no mention made of the DAS scandal overseen by Uribe's chosen successor? Or the policy of false positives, the army's extrajudicial killing of civilians who are later dressed up as guerrillas to increase the battle body count which secures more US aid for fighting guerrillas and traffickers.

4.9 million people are displaced in Colombia, second only to Sudan. Violence and displacement are directly linked to the struggle for control over land for the development of resources including the oil, minerals, and gas that Canadian companies are heavily involved in. The UN Raconteur For Internally Displaced People has said the taking over of lands is now a policy of displacement. Who accesses those lands for profit?

The deal is a fairly typical aggressive market access agreement. The safeguards and side deals are quite ineffective. New powers of enforcement to secure access to resources that would discourage future environmental and human rights laws. The Colombian government could not introduce laws to deal with illegal seizure of land after Canadian corps in place. There is no obligation on the part of corporations to screen their security forces and no provision for victims of corporate violations to have access to Canadian courts for violations created by Canadian corps.

Agriculture market access. A very aggressive liberalization of Colombian markets would accelerate displacement. Lifting tariffs on grains, wheat, and pork will undermine 12.000 local wheat farmers and 9000 jobs in informal pork sector. This FTA eliminates measures to protect farmers.

Side note : For an amusing counterpoint to her argument on tariffs, see Con committee member Brad Trost's argument in today's National Post on why this FTA will be good for Colombians :

"Free trade in agriculture will also allow the poor and other consumers to purchase foodstuffs at lower prices because tariffs on Canadian wheat, barley, lentils, peas and other crops will disappear."

This FTA does not even met Nafta standards, Sreenivasan continued. There's no independent means of enforcement and the whole mechanism of the side accord relies exclusively on the goodwill of the governments to enforce the accord. With fines only.

What happened to the proposed independent human rights assessment before implementation?
Canada's seal of approval only serves to pave the way for a US-Colombia deal, currently stalled over human rights complaints.


After all that, it was hard to imagine what former Con now Liberal Scott Brison would counter with. This deal is pretty much his baby in committee now, ever since he forged the Liberal figleaf amendment that would see each country produce ongoing yearly human rights reports instead of a preceding independent one, killed off by the Con in the House in 2008.
Take it away, Scott! :

"It's the most robust FTA agreement ever signed between any two countries.
There's only one party in Colombia against FTAs and it's polling at 5%. Isn't it culturally condescending and sanctimonious for us in Canada to say Colombians don't have the right to self-governance? They are an independent country."

Wow. Scott also asked witness Yessika Morales, daughter of a murdered trade unionist, if things haven't improved and if she didn't feel safer now.
Who is holding the "stupid" gun to Scott Brison's head?
Stewart in Colombia : Liberals Misinforming Public to Promote a FTA with Colombia.
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Where in the world is Frank Iacobucci?

Kady has been trying to get some answers on how Justice Frank Iacobucci's inquiry into the Afghan detainee documents is coming along, given that Speaker of the House Peter Milliken ruled on Tuesday that Frank's mandate is outside of parliamentary oversight and he reports only to the Minister of Justice.

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Well, at least we know where he is.

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Milliken: Parliament is supreme; Gagnon: No, not really

Speaker of the House Milliken ruled today that Parliament is supreme and Steve is not the President of Canada.
Milliken ruled that government was in breach of parliamentary privilege by refusing to comply with the House’s order in December to produce documents related to the transfer of Afghan detainees to risk of torture and Steve now has two weeks to figure out the details of a face-saving compromise with the opposition parties that would safeguard national security while still obeying the House's order to produce.
A victory for democracy then.

However ...

Over at the Military Police Complaints Commission today, Major Denis Gagnon testified that those very same Afghan transfer orders that Milliken has just ordered be produced are :

"all thrown together in a storage bin, a sea container" and an assessment of how long it would take to catalogue documents and identify the records requested by the commission may take years."

So. Milliken says Parliament is supreme and has the right to them but some major says sadly it just isn't going to happen.

"Earlier a senior military official testified that some Afghan detainee documents requested by the commission have been delayed to ensure no information gets out that could jeopardize the security of troops in Afghanistan."

Really. How much info from transfer orders made in say 2007 is going to jeopardize troop security today? You've been using this same excuse for years now.

"The commission was also told that Defence officials are screening out documents that military police would not have seen in the course of their duties."

... because last year Steve curtailed the authority of the MPCC to ask for docs that do not directly pertain to the military police.

"Gagnon said he makes the decision on what military police would have seen based on his personal experience in theatre and his knowledge of communications channels within the military chain of command and communications links with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade."

So it's the Dept. of Defence that decides what is relevant then, not the MPCC.

"Commission counsel Ron Lunau asked if the commission could look at the documents that have been screened out since it should be up to the commission, not Defence officials, to determine what military police should have seen.

The answer from government counsel Alain Prefontaine and from Gagnon was a firm no."

Ok. Parliament may be supreme but Defence is supremer. Got it.
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George Galloway vs Team Carpet Pee

Just over a year ago, British MP George Galloway was banned from Canada because, in the words of former American Enterprise Institute alumnus and Jason Kenney spokesthingey Alykhan Velshi :

"He is a threat to the security of Canadians. It is actually quite odious and I think it is entirely appropriate for our security agencies to say that if they have advanced notice that Mr Galloway is going to come to Canada to pee on our carpet, that we should deny him entry to the home."

A spokesman said he first heard about Galloway's visit from the Jewish Defence League letter."

Today Galloway's court case to overturn that ban begins in Toronto.

Unfortunately for Team Carpet Pee, in the meantime there have been 'developments', as they say. Despite Kenney's insistance that there was no political interference on his part in the decision to ban Galloway :

Kenney stressed that his political staff never contacted the Canada Border Services Agency – which made the call that the veteran politician was inadmissible under national-security grounds.

"Neither I nor my office have been in direct touch with CBSA officials about it," Kenney said in an interview.

frantic government correspondence between Kenney's office, CBSA, Immigration and Canada’s High Commissioner to Britain about banning Galloway was inadvertantly forwarded to Galloway's lawyer Barbara Jackman. You can read it for yourself in two parts at Rabble here and here.

Also at issue in the case is how newsmedia were able to publish stories about the ban on Galloway entering Canada before he was informed himself :

"... on March 18, Mr. Velshi asked Canada’s High Commission in London for phone numbers of political editors for British newspapers. On March 20, The Sun published an “exclusive” – that George Galloway had been barred from Canada.
Mr. Velshi insisted last week that he did not leak the story: "No. Absolutely not."

Galloway, you will recall, was able to make the speech that so alarmed Velshi, "Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar", to Canadians via video link from New York City, where they are evidently made of sterner stuff and do not share Velshi's view that he is "a threat to the security of Canadians".

"It's all nonsense," says Galloway. "If you want my honest opinion, I think the Canadian government is more afraid of my views on Afghanistan than they were on my views on Palestine."

One of the sponsors of Galloway's proposed Canadian tour last year, the church group KAIROS, subsequently had its government funding cut off later that year for apparently entirely unrelated reasons I'm sure.

Opening arguments in the case begin today. Insert popcorn-munching smiley here.

Update : Laura at We Move To Canada attended the hearing. Her excellent and amusing coverage in three parts here. Thank you, Laura!

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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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Over at the Afghan Committee, things are very "robust"

In fact Wednesday's testimony by three former Canadian ambassadors to Afghanistan on the Afghan detainee transfer-and-abuse system marks perhaps the single most frequent use of the word "robust" - eleven times in two hours by my count - evah.

Globe and Mail :

"The court Tuesday heard of documentation, drawn from military files, relating to six known cases in which Afghan captives handed to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) prisons, including one in Canada’s military jurisdiction in Kandahar, are said to have been tortured using electric shocks, beatings with wires, whips and metal rods, sleep deprivation and cuts, between early 2007 and late 2008."

Oh sorry, that was in Britain on Tuesday.

In Canada on Wednesday, our ambassador to Afghanistan in 2008, Ron Hoffmann, told the Afghan committee :

"There were no allegations of abuse in 2008"

while Dept of Foreign Affairs' David Sproule, ambassador from Oct 2005 to April 2007, said although "they were under no illusions about the treatment of detainees" :

"We never transferred detainees from Canadian forces if there was any risk of torture . We exceeded our international obligations. ... There was not a single incidence of detainee abuse during my tenure."

Not a single incidence from Oct 2005 to April 2007?
And Arif Lalani, ambassador from April 2007 to Aug 2008?

Paul Dewar, NDP :

"With regards to the NDS, Mr Lalani, one of the questions we had as to the new agreement, is that it's become evident to me through evidence that has been given and what I've heard today - when an allegation was made, that the responsible entity at the NDS facility to look into that allegation and investigate it was the NDS. Is that your understanding as well?

Lalani :

"Point #1, I think we had a number of allegations that were made as a result of our monitoring.

Point #2, the agreement that we signed had clearly in it that the Afghans would exercise their obligations and their sovereignty by investigating allegations, and so that was done.

Point #3 as has been made very clear in all of the reporting that you may have seen and that others have seen, we also inform the ICRC who undertook whatever action they wanted to take and I want to be very careful about saying more about their work.

Dewar :

"Will you then confirm then that when an allegation was made, from a detainee or from another source about torture, that it was the NDS who investigated that?"

Lalani : "I think from my other ..."

Dewar :

"Sorry to interrupt but I know the ICRC was involved and I understand their mandate, but according to the agreement - I mean Ms Buck made this statement in Federal Court as well - was it the NDS that was responsible for following it up?"

Lalani :

"From my recollection of the cases that involved the NDS, they most likely made the investigation."

Dewar :

"And do you understand why I would have concerns - and many others - that in the case of Mr Colvin's claim that there was torture going on and that there was concerns that had to be removed from the report and wasn't giving the full picture, and the fact of the matter is what we've heard is - and I think you halted transfers of detainees because you had concerns about the NDS - that it really isn't a strong enough agreement to have the NDS investigate itself."

The NDS investigating itself might go some distance in explaining why, according to Hoffmann earlier, there were no further allegations of abuse in 2008, supposing that is indeed the case.

Meanwhile, over in unredacted Britain, internal memos from named British officers outline the continuing impossibility of monitoring detainees disappeared by the NDS, along with all the gruesome unredacted details of their torture.

Fed up with two year's of government obstruction in delivering of our detainee documents, the Military Police Complaints Commission has summoned the military and foreign affairs officials responsible for the documents to testify next Tuesday.

Whatever is in those documents, Steve seems desperate to hide them at any cost but he can't rely on the self-inflicted Jaffer/Guergis misdirection scandal continuing to distract the public once the unredacted details of Britain's apparently identical detainee problems start heavy rotation in the national media.
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Trade - As It Really Happens

On CBC's As It Happens last night, they were interviewing someone from Kenya who was unable to ship his flowers and produce to Europe by air due to the ashfall from Iceland's unpronounceable volcano. We will lose millions of dollars, he said, and it will all go to compost and cattlefeed.

You could hear the gears turning over in the CBC interviewer's head. Don't you have people starving over there? the gears said. Why is 95% of your crop flowers ? Why aren't you growing food ?

Well here ya go, CBC. Here is a 2 minute vid on trade in Kenya as it really happens, information that would have added a little much-needed context to your flowery interview.

And you 37 Libs who helped pass the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Investment Agreement yesterday, you too.

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Friday night Canada-Colombia FTA news dump

(Monday night update below)

On Thursday, the US Dept. of Defense issued a presser from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates praising Colombia as an "exporter of security" and "a model for the region" in its "crackdown against a leftist insurgency".

Touting the U.S.-Colombian Defense Cooperation Agreement under which the US operates seven of Colombia's military bases, Gates called for a renewal of efforts to pass a US-Colombia free trade agreement, "noting that he talked with National Security Advisor James L. Jones Jr. before his trip here about renewing that effort".

Because, as I posted over at The Galloping Beaver on Thursday night, any discussion of a free trade investment agreement naturally originates with the Defense Dept and the National Security Advisor, so we can take Gates' call for renewed strategic meddling in South America as Canada's midwifing marching orders.

And voilà ... right on schedule ...
On Friday afternoon, as not noted in any of our national media, Con House Leader Jay Hill moved to curtail any further debate of Bill C-2, the Canada-Colombia FTA, before it passes second reading and goes back to committee where a combined LibCon effort will likely pass it .

Lib Ralph Goodale noted the motion was "a bit of a surprise on a Friday afternoon" - indeed it was not mentioned in the daily Order Papers - and Lib Dennis Lee fretted about process, but other than that, no Liberals spoke against it, leaving the Bloc and NDP to point out for the umpteenth time what a completely crap bill it is. Unsurprisingly, Hill's motion passed and Peter Van Loan advised the last day for debate on C-2 will be today.

In Sept 2009 Scott Brison said in the House :

"If we isolate Colombia in the Andean region and leave Colombia exposed and vulnerable to the ideological attacks of Chavez's Venezuela, we will be allowing evil to flourish."

Last month in an effort to stave off criticism for supporting a free trade investment agreement with the country with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, Brison brokered a deal with Colombian President Uribe at Davos wherein Canada and Colombia will each conduct their own annual human rights assessments, handily circumventing the recommendation by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on International Trade that an independent human rights impact assessment must be done before the agreement is considered.
Yes, their own human rights assessments; their own environmental assessments too.

I don't have a *lol* loud enough for the concept of Uribe and Co. being forced to do their own assessments - something Uribe does yearly already - but the Cons lapped it up, the Libs are happy to have been provided with a fig leaf, and the media are congratulating them both for "making parliament work".

"Making parliament work" apparently means the Cons killing debate on a crap bill after they get a sufficient number of the Libs onside.

Write those Libs before today's vote !

Dear Honourable Members:

In February 2008 Colombian MP Daniel García-Peña appeared before you to explain that the agreement as written would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia."

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws.
Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."

Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña said, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports.
"The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he said. "[This] would wipe them out."

Those who would benefit are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.
Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña added, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country.

According to the Washington Post, the millions of dollars in US aid funnelled into Colombia go to the wealthy landowners to grow oil-producing palm groves : "four families received most of the $10 million provided in 2007 and 2008".

45 trade union leaders were killed last year in addition to thousands of indigenous people pushed off their land for mining interests.

And for what?
According to Glen Hodgson, VP and chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada :
"Our annual trade with Colombia is about the same level as that with South Dakota and is actually smaller than that with Delaware or Rhode Island. Compared to other markets much closer, Colombia is not really a major player. 80% of Colombia’s imports to Canada are actually duty free already."

I urge you to vote against the investors rights bill C-2 today.

Thank you.

Monday night update. Canada-Colombia FTA passes 183 to 78
37 Libs voted with the Cons in favour; Bloc and NDP against.
Turns out the media pundits were right about Libs and Cons working happily together to secure agribiz dumping and investment rights for Canadian companies to exploit Colombia.

In the House today, Liberals Bob Rae, Scott Simms, Scott Brison, Martha Hall Findlay, Paul Szabo, Justin Trudeau, and Robert Oliphant joined the Cons in praising Uribe's remarkable progress in reducing poverty by 1% per year while simultaneusly increasing the gap between rich and poor. "We'll be helping!" said the lovely Hall Findlay. "Windows, not walls!"

No Libs voted against the bill, although some abstained. However the debate did gave Lib Scott Brison the opportunity to bring up Hugo Chavez a few more times so that he and Con MP Ed Fast, the Chair of the Justice and Human Rights Committee, could grill NDP's Olivia Chow on why she had never publicly denounced Chavez. I think I liked Brison better when he was a Con.

The bill now heads off to committee for rubberstamping by the 7 out of 12 committee members who already voted in favour of it today.

Walk of Shame - Liberals who voted with the Cons on C-2, the Canada Colombia FTA : Ignatieff, Dion, Rae, Bagnell, Brison, Bagnell, Belanger, Crombie, Cuzner, Dryden, Kirsty Duncan, Easter, Eyking, Fry, Garneau, Goodale, Holland, Hall Findlay, LeBlanc, MacAuley, McCallum, McGuinty, John McKay, Mendes, Shawn Murphy, Murray, Oliphant, Proulx, Ratansi, Regan, Rota, Russell, and Trudeau.
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First Nations' Lawsuit to Protect Wild Salmon

First Nations Chiefs apply to bring a class action suit to protect the wild salmon of BC from fishfarms.

Chief Bob Chamberlin :

"We look forward to stripping away the denial the provincial government chooses to trot out when it comes to the aquaculture industry. We look around the world and we can see the problems this industry represents. We also are very aware of the delay, deny, and distract approach that industry has and which our provincial government has whole-heartedly embraced. ... We will not stop. We will protect the wild salmon and we will protect the environment of our people."
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