Thursday, November 7, 2024

The Lonesome, Suspicious Overseas Death of a Canadian Mother of 6



 By Matthew Behrens

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the sudden mid-October death of a Canadian mother of six in a Turkish deportation facility have generated a high-profile call for answers and accountability. They’ve also placed a renewed spotlight on Canada’s ongoing refusal to repatriate 16 arbitrarily detained citizens (along with four non-Canadian mothers and siblings of Canadian children) held without charge up to 7.5 years in brutal North East Syrian prisons and detention camps.
 
In a detailed letter to Ministers Mélanie Joly (Global Affairs Canada, GAC) and Dominic Leblanc (Public Safety), Senator Kim Pate, international human rights law professor Alex Neve and refugee rights lawyer Hadayt Nazami urged Canada to take immediate steps, “particularly while witnesses are accessible and evidence is fresh,” to launch an expert, independent and impartial investigation into the death of the mother, known as FJ.
 
The potential roles played by GAC officials and the RCMP in events leading up to FJ’s death eerily recall the troubling history of Canadian officials found to have contributed to the overseas detention and torture of Canadians including Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki,  Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin, Omar Khadr and Abousfian Abdelrazik, the last currently suing the Canadian government for its complicity in his torture in Sudan.
 
FJ and her children had been among 50 Canadian men, women and children held for years without charge in an archipelago of detention sites imprisoning tens of thousands of people – half of them children –  under the auspices of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the military arm of the Kurdish Democratic Autonomous  Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), an ostensible Canadian ally in the Global Coalition Against Daesh (aka ISIS).
 
The majority of detainees are Iraqis and Syrians uprooted by the mass aerial and ground-level violence unleashed by the Syrian regime’s attacks on Arab Spring protesters, as well as intense bombing by the US-led coalition, and the rapid expansion and subsequent retreat of Daesh. Many report having been forced to move repeatedly in response to multiple military campaigns waged by a series of armed actors from the Syrian regime, Daesh and Russia to the U.S. and Kurdish YPG (“People’s Defence Units”).
 
Packed into the prison camps and jails are everyone from Daesh loyalists to trafficked women, Yazidi survivors of genocide, and several thousand foreign nationals who had traveled to the region for a diverse set of reasons:  from humanitarian volunteers as the Assad regime dropped barrel bombs on its people, to others enticed by the ultimately false promise of an Islamic paradise under the self-declared caliphate. While some joined in the cut-throat violence of Daesh, many report having regrets the moment they arrived, but were unable to escape.

When dozens of Canadian detainees had their case heard by the Federal Court, Justice Henry Brown took note to clarify in a 2023 ruling that, “Notably the [government] Respondents do not allege any of the Applicants [detainees] engaged in or assisted in terrorist activities. The Respondents affirmed this position at the hearing.” He went on to point out that “there is no evidence” before the Court that any detained Canadians had violated the law.

Threshold for Torture
This violence-infused cauldron has been described as “Guantanamo on steroids,” both for conditions described by the United Nations as meeting “the threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law” and the complete absence of an internationally recognized legal regime through which detention can be meaningfully challenged. While thousands have been slowly repatriated at the request of Kurdish authorities themselves (often with the support of the US State Department and military), numerous countries, including Canada, have only brought their citizens home under political pressure and the threat of legal action.
 
Canada has invested $2.9 million for the repatriation of Iraqi detainees from North East Syria. At the same time, however, it continues to resist the return of its own citizens, even as Kurdish officials clearly declare that all Ottawa must do is write a letter requesting its citizens, provide travel documents,  and send an envoy or third party delegate to the DAANES capital of Qamishli for a sign over, after which the US military would fly the detainees home (as it has frequently done for other detainee, including those from Canada). Ottawa has gone to court to prevent repatriation, variously arguing that it has little to no ability to visit the region (even though its officials have shown up for five separate repatriation signing ceremonies) while claiming social services and state security agents would be “overwhelmed” by the return of a very modest group of traumatized detainees.
 
However, the federal government’s weak excuses have been easily undermined both by the ease with which 32 Canadian women and children have returned, and the organization of a civil society delegation organized by Pate, Neve, Nazami and former Canadian ambassador Scott Heatherington, all of whom visited Canadian detainees and met with Kurdish officials in August, 2023. It was during that visit that delegation members met FJ.
 
Alex Neve recalls FJ’s family was a very tight, loving unit, despite being forced to live under the shadow of a Canadian dictate that the children could be repatriated only if they left their mother behind. “She was essentially being forced to choose between maintaining her close and sustaining relationship with her children or sending them, alone, to Canada,” Neve and other letter signatories wrote. “If she had taken that step she had no assurance as to when, if ever, she would be reunited with her children. At the time we pressed the government to ensure the family would be kept together and repatriated to Canada as a family unit.”  In addition, “FJ had made it clear to us that she was prepared to answer any allegations leveled  against her through a fair legal process in Canada.”
 
The August 2023 meeting with FJ took place in  Roj prison camp. It’s been described by the European human rights body Rights and Security as a fundamentally unsafe environment “in which physical violence is common and psychological trauma is endemic, giving rise to apparent breaches of the rights of detainees to life and security of the person, and the freedom from torture and inhumane treatment”. The meeting  followed several years of FJ’s repatriation requests that began on December 6, 2021.
 
A Traumatized Family
On May 12, 2023, a United Nations Special Rapporteur delivered a disturbing report to the Canadian government, detailing FJ and her children’s deteriorating mental and physical health and requesting a response within 60 days. Canada was silent.
 
That UN report found “an extremely traumatised family in very poor health,” noting FJ “suffered from abscesses and permanent infection from shrapnel/gas/chemicals in the buttocks/perianal/upper thigh area that needed surgery. She had a pass for a wound draining puss, fever, was weak, and in pain. She also suffered the post-childbirth consequences of delivering her child alone in frightening conditions, including malformed healing tissues and internal bleeding. She suffered from anaemia, was underweight, and her teeth revealed calcium deficiency.”
 
In addition, the report found that FJ was “traumatised by the years she had spent in the camps, multiple imprisonments and torture leading to broken bones, and sudden separation from her children,” as well as by a December 2021 attack on her by prison camp guards.
 
FJ’s children also suffered from hair loss and calcium deficiencies, were underweight and had no appetite. Three of the four young boys had suffered bouts of hepatitis at least three times, and two had had it four times since they arrived in the prison camps. “Three of them had parasites and worms affecting their digestion,” the grim report continued. “As the six children were all already old enough to understand that their mother had been attacked and was unwell, this caused them a great deal of distress, being aware that their mother relied highly on them. Both girls were described as showing signs of depression and anxiety, as well as severe stress due to helping their mother incessantly with their four younger siblings.” The children suffered severe separation anxiety, and two of them “woke up four to five times a night just to check she was still there.”
 
Despite having this information in hand, the UN reports that Canada had assessed the children as being eligible for repatriation, but not their mother, leading the rapporteur  to remind Canadian officials that “preventing family separation and preserving family unity are essential components of the child protection system.” Indeed, given “the immense closeness and attachment that they have to their mother as the only element of stability in their lives,” the report continued, separation “would cause these young children irreparable trauma.”
 
While Canada couched its offer to FJ as seeking her permission for family separation, the UN Rapporteur noted “any consent to the repatriation of her children that would be given by [FJ] in the context and circumstances that she finds herself in can never be considered as meaningfully procured. Should [FJ]’s consent be considered as the basis for the repatriation of the children without her, this could amount to forced and arbitrary separation, a clear violation of international law.”

Instead of responding to the UN and working to bring FJ home, Canadian officials were instead busy informing FJ’s then lawyer in a June 21, 2023 letter that she was considered a “threat to public safety and national security because she is assessed to adhere to extremist ideological beliefs which may lead her to act in a violence [sic] manner that would pose a security threat in Canada and the government has no ability to ensure that no such conduct occurs.”
 
The sharp contrast between that dramatic assessment – factual justification for which was never provided – and the ill health of FJ and her kids was reminiscent of similar baseless, exaggerated threats that are common currency in the so-called Global War on Terror. An internal security memo released to Global News sparked additional doubt about the unsubstantiated fears. While it is unclear if the RCMP or CSIS had questioned FJ before that date, the internal memo revealed that the real concern of state security officials was the lack of evidence to charge her with anything. In the Kafkaesque  language of security officials, “In the absence of a charge package or peace bond, F.J. would have freedom of movement upon return to Canada.”
 
It was unclear how officials believed, without evidence, that someone in such rough shape could pose any threat in Canada, where a broad suite of security legislation is readily accessible to impose charges and conditions on individuals such as other mothers who’ve been successfully returned.
 
Fractured Return
When a US military flight touched down in Canada on May 7, FJ’s six children disembarked without their mother, winding up separated into units of two in a series of foster families. Ironically, a statement from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that coincided with their arrival included the hope that, “As governments undertake repatriation of their nationals, we urge thoughtfulness and flexibility to ensure that to the maximum extent possible family units remain intact.”
 
 It appears that FJ – frustrated with the obstacles Canada placed in the way of her right to return, guaranteed by Section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – had conceived a plan that would eventually allow her family to be together in Canada. As the letter from Kim Pate et al. points out, FJ, “likely out of desperation,” escaped from Roj several months earlier, apparently with the goal of receiving travel documents from a Canadian mission in Istanbul or Ankara. Unfortunately, she was arrested and detained at the Tarsus Closed Women’s Prison by Turkish authorities on June 14. 

FJ received Canadian consular visits on July 16 and October 1, and was apparently interrogated by the RCMP on one or two occasions as well. Following her acquittal on the charges of belonging to a terrorist group (no small achievement in Türkiye, whose judiciary is generally unfavourable to such defendants), FJ was sent to an immigration holding centre to await apparent deportation. She was dead within 48 hours of what Turkish officials claim was a heart attack, even though FJ was only 40 and had no history of cardiac problems.
 
In the letter to Joly and Leblanc, its authors point out: “We have been told that after one of those visits with either consular officials or the RCMP, her mood and demeanor changed markedly, and that she became seriously depressed and psychologically distressed. She told others that she had been informed that she would never again see her children and that she was going to be sent to face trial in the United States.”
 
Pate et al have serious questions that they believe should be part of the inquiries made by an independent investigator, including whether an independent autopsy has been conducted; the nature of medication that FJ had received to deal with sleeping problems and who prescribed it; detention conditions in the immigration holding centre; specific contacts between Canadian officials and FJ while detained in Roj prison camp and Türkiye; what FJ may have been told about possible criminal charges against her in Canada or the USA (and whether she was informed of her right to counsel during such questioning); any contacts between Türkiye and Canada following her detention; the legal basis for denying her repatriation with her children (and how that squared with Canada’s binding obligation under international human rights law to ensure the best interests of the children); and how the refusal to bring her home reconciled with an RCMP briefing document that advised, “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadian citizens the right to return to Canada. Therefore, even if a Canadian engaged in terrorist activity abroad, the government of Canada must facilitate their return to Canada.”

“Will my son be next?” 
 On October 25, Sally Lane, the mother of the longest held Canadian detainee in Northeast Syria, Jack Letts, held a vigil at the entrance to the Global Affairs building in downtown Ottawa, where she laid flowers at a makeshift memorial with a sign that read, “In memory of FJ, with prayers for her and her six orphaned children. FJ’s blood is on the hands of Canadian officials. We need an independent inquiry now and immediate repatriation of all remaining detainees.”
 
 Lane also delivered a letter of her own as a gaggle of security warily warned her against placing flowers on the property.
 
“We have warned for years that a Canadian will die while this government comes up with one pathetic excuse after another to avoid its clear responsibility to bring our loved ones home,” Lane told a GAC staff member who came out to receive her envelope. “Will my son be next? Do you know what it is like to live with that fear for almost 8 years? Everyone detained has been clear: if you have concerns about them, bring them home, end their cruel arbitrary detention, and charge them in a fair and open judicial proceeding. Leaving them there to rot and die because you’re afraid that the monster you have made them out to be is in fact someone who may not have done anything wrong, is a complete abdication of your legal obligations.”

The Supreme Court of Canada refused to consider a hearing on her son’s case and that of three other male detainees in November 2023. Their legal team’s rare application for reconsideration was submitted in March, 2024 with an urgent plea for an expedited hearing. Last Friday, November 1, the Supreme Court declined once again. Lane declared the decision not to hold a hearing meant “The Supreme Court has just callously signed my son's death warrant," adding, “I expect this government not to care about human rights since all they care about is popularity in the next election, but for the Supreme Court not to care either is gutting and actually unbelievable."

F.J. was buried last week. Following her funeral, Green Party MP Elizabeth May asked if the Liberals would commit to an independent investigation and repatriation for the remaining detainees. 

Joly’s Parliamentary Secretary, Rob Oliphant, offered a boilerplate non-response, declaring his thoughts are with “children who have already endured so much in this situation.” He noted that this situation would be treated with the “utmost seriousness and the sense of urgency it absolutely deserves,” but declined to give further details. Asked a similar question during an unrelated media conference the following day, Joly told reporters, “We absolutely need to shed light on what happened… Her six children are in Canada. We owe them the truth and, not only that, we owe them support. And so they can personally count on me to make sure that that is a priority of mine and of my team." 

Joly failed to outline how the search for truth will ensue. Meanwhile, significant questions remain about whether Canada will appoint an independent investigator, and if officials will be sufficiently haunted by this tragic outcome to heed the calls of international human rights organizations, the United Nations, the US State Department, and a Parliamentary committee to end the exile of its remaining detained citizens in Northeast Syria.

(An edited version of this piece will appear in The Breach)



Saturday, November 2, 2024

Supreme Court Rejects Reconsideration Request in Case of Canadian Detainees in Northeast Syria, Rubberstamping Their Banishment




























OTTAWA, November 2, 2024 – In a late afternoon announcement on Friday, November 1, the Supreme Court of Canada announced it would not hear the request for reconsideration of an earlier decision not to hear an appeal in a case dealing with the repatriation of four Canadian men arbitrarily detained for up to 7.5 years under dire conditions in Northeast Syria. It came almost a full year after the Court refused last November to hear the original appeal, and bookended a dramatic week in which it was revealed that a Canadian mother of six previously denied repatriation from Northeast Syria had died under suspicious circumstances in a Turkish deportation facility.
 
 “This leaves my son Jack and the other detainees under an indefinite state of exile with a Canadian judicial stamp of approval,” said Sally Lane, who has fought to bring her son home for almost a decade. “What does it say about our country’s highest court when they see the clear injustice taking place here yet fail to even consider the case? The evidence before them showed it is very easy to repatriate these men, yet the government of Canada refuses to assist, even though the Federal Court judge who heard the original case concluded that ‘Canadians are dying or at risk of dying every day this matter is adjourned.’”
 
Another mother of one of the Canadian detainees shared Lane’s sense of devastation. “I am greatly disappointed that the Supreme Court of Canada has decided not to give any reconsideration of this verdict,” she said.  “Especially, because the previous verdict itself was overturned – meaning that there was no judicial consensus on the responsibilities of Global Affairs to Canadian citizens who are detained abroad without charges and while facing no trials. How can any Canadian ever be confident that if – God forbid – they are detained abroad like this, that their government will even attempt to assist them, when our federal courts won’t compel them to perform this minimum duty?”
  
Given the length of the litigation, the deteriorating conditions faced by the detainees, and the dogged refusal of the Canadian government to assist in their return, last March, the detainees’ families and legal team took the rare step of seeking a reconsideration of the November 16, 2023 decision not to hear an appeal in the case and full hearing before the country’s highest court.
 
The Court did not give reasons for its decision to refuse the reconsideration request, stating only that it did not feel that this life-and-death appeal met the test of “exceedingly rare circumstances.”
 
“These men face ongoing cruelty and indefinite detention under the threat of death. Canada’s refusal to repatriate them gives rise to legal issues of public importance,” read the reconsideration brief filed on March 15, 2024. “The circumstances in which these men find themselves are of a rare severity, yet the [Federal] Court of Appeal’s ruling [rejecting repatriation] leaves them with no assurance of any effort on the part of their government to assist them, even though it is the only actor that can help them. The hopelessness of their situation is itself a trigger of deep psychological pain.”
 
The devastating Supreme Court decision came exactly one month after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called repatriation the  “only durable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in northeast Syria. We have to urgently accelerate our work to repatriate, reintegrate, and – where appropriate – prosecute detained and displaced persons from northeast Syria.  The United States stands ready to provide support – logistically, diplomatically – to advance this effort.” Inexplicably, the Canadian government continues to ignore this clear offer of assistance from our closest ally.
 
There are currently 9 Canadian men, 7 Canadian children, and 4 non-Canadian mothers and siblings of those Canadian children who are still detained in Northeast Syria; 32 have been returned in eight separate instances. The non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children have applied for temporary resident permits.
 
“The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear this critical case leaves us with an immoral stalemate,” Lane continued. “The Federal Court of Appeal says this is a government matter, while the government refuses to act unless ordered to do so by the courts. While both sides argue over who bears responsibility, the detainees are slowly dying. Does Canada really expect family members to shrug their shoulders and just accept the fact our loved ones are going to die in a foreign prison, like we saw this week in the case of the Canadian mother FJ? It is shocking the government has been allowed to get away with this inhuman outrage for so long.”
 
According to Matthew Behrens of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, which leads a public campaign for repatriation, “there had been over a year’s worth of compelling new evidence that was not before the court when this matter was first heard in late 2022. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear their appeal last year, and last Friday’s decision, have combined to abandon the detainees to banishment even as Canada is implicated in the mistreatment of these Canadians. Ottawa has refused to repatriate them when asked to do so by their jailers, which is a violation of Canada’s binding international obligations.” 
 
Much of that new evidence had been contained in a detailed affidavit by Alex Neve, a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and a professor of international human rights law. Neve was part of a civil society delegation led by Senator Kim Pate that traveled to the region in August 2023, meeting with Kurdish officials and two of the detained men, in addition to visiting women and children detained in the Roj prison camp. The appeal clearly pointed out that the delegation could have received the men from their Kurdish detainers if the Canadian government had authorized them to do so, but it had refused.
 
“Canada’s refusal to let the civil society delegation represent it for the prisoner handover is part of its pattern of declining to take up feasible solutions for protecting the Applicants and enabling them to return to their country of citizenship,” the reconsideration brief had pointed out. “Canada had maintained before the Federal Court that repatriation could only occur if a Canadian government official attended in northeast Syria. This is not so.”
 
As indicated in the January 2023 ruling by Federal Court Justice Brown that ordered repatriation (overturned at the Federal Court of Appeal and denied leave and reconsideration by the Supreme Court), no evidence has ever been presented publicly that implicates the men in any illegal or violent activities.
 
The reconsideration brief reminded the Supreme Court of this, noting “Canada has presented no evidence of the particular political, religious or ideological views of these men that would make them a threat to Canada. The evidence indicates that Canada has exercised its discretion to repatriate women and children in the same circumstances, leaving the only distinction between these Applicants and those repatriated to be age and gender.”
 
Neve’s affidavit outlined the significant health concerns of those detained, the ongoing lack of Canadian consular access (and lack of access to legal counsel and family contact), unending FBI interrogations of the men (for whom their families did not even have proof of life when the court proceedings were initiated), the complete lack of any legal process in NE Syria that the men could access to challenge their arbitrary detention, the detainees’ willingness to face any allegations that might exist against them in a fair and transparent Canadian court proceeding, and the rapidly deteriorating security environment in the region as the US plans a military withdrawal from NE Syria by year’s end.
 
“Our delegation’s concerns about ongoing human rights violations experienced by Canadian prisoners held in NE Syria are heightened by the fact that the Canadian government continues to maintain the position that it is not prepared to arrange their repatriation to Canada,” Neve wrote. “Our delegation’s assessment, on the basis of the information we gathered during our mission to NE Syria in late August, is that unless the Canadian government takes steps to facilitate the repatriation of Canadian male prisoners held in NE Syria to Canada, where they can be tried if evidence supports bringing charges, these men face the prospect of an indeterminate and indefinite period of continuing arbitrary and unlawful detention without access to medical care, and without charge or trial, in contravention of international human rights standards that are binding on Canada and are also reflected in the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
 
Also included in the application was a year’s worth of public statements made by Prime Minister Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and other officials that provide the impression that the government believes it has a responsibility to help its citizens in perilous situations abroad. Its refusal to do so for the Northeast Syria cases is, according to Neve, “either disingenuous, represents a conscious decision to select only some Canadians as deserving of its assistance, or reflects a developing expansive, but inconsistently applied understanding of its obligations towards its citizens” under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
 
Indeed, in an October 30, 2023 speech, Minister Joly stated: “400 Canadians are trapped in Gaza, they are living in fear and despair. As a government, we have a duty to bring them to safety.” 
 
While such a recognition of Canada’s obligation is an important step, advocates question why that same obligation does not extend to the Canadians in northeast Syria, who similarly live in fear and despair. 
 
“Ultimately, Canada only acts when the courts or threat of court action requires it to do so,” explains Behrens. “In almost every incidence of prior repatriations, it was the threat of going to court that made a difference to bringing home 32 women and children. The Supreme Court failed to responsibly exercise its role here and uphold the human rights of these long-suffering arbitrary detainees.” 
 
Repatriation advocates point to the dangerous precedent that yesterday’s decision poses for other nations whose nationals are detained in northeast Syria.   As the reconsideration brief pointed out, “This Court is at the apex of the Canadian judicial system. Its refusal to hear the Applicants’ appeal constitutes a failure of its guardianship role. This is compounded in the international context where the issue of a state’s responsibility to assist a severely distressed and vulnerable citizen is recognized as an evolving area of international human rights law. Other states and international agencies are grappling with the question of whether a state has a positive obligation to repatriate its citizens where this is possible and where not to do so leaves them subject to cruel treatment. The failure of this Court to hear the appeal constitutes a failure of the Court to fulfill the important role it plays in the development of human rights internationally.”
 
Officials have resisted the return of Canadian citizens, however, despite clear declarations from Kurdish officials that all Ottawa must do is request their return by letter, provide travel documents, and send an envoy or delegate to the region for a sign over, after which the US military would fly the detainees home (as it has frequently done for American and also previously for Canadian detainees). 
 
The detainees’ loved ones continue to press the federal government to follow those three easy steps, noting their loved ones have expressed a willingness to face any credible allegations against them in a fair, transparent judicial proceeding on Canadian soil.

-30-
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Support Abousfian Abdelrazik as Canadian Complicity in Torture Goes on Trial (Online and in Ottawa)




Join us in court beginning October 21 in Ottawa or online as the six week trial proceeds.
To register online to observe proceedings, visit: https://cas-satj.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fSbwmniiRZ2f7_T7xFLkGg 
To receive court location details for Ottawa, contact tasc@web.ca
Abousfian Abdelrazik is “the victim of a series of gross injustices attributable directly or indirectly to Canadian state actors, including arbitrary and illegal detention, prolonged solitary confinement, torture, and forced exile and separation from his home and young children. These breaches of the Plaintiff’s fundamental human rights were flagrant, extreme and continuous over a period of six years. Most egregiously, many senior Canadian officials were fully aware that Canada could have ended the Plaintiff’s cruel and unjust ordeal at any moment by simply securing a flight home to Montreal. In this action, he seeks redress and compensation that vindicates his Charter rights and is proportionate to the unprecedented seriousness of this wrongful state conduct.” (from his lawsuit).

Paul Champ, Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyer, recalls: "I was in the room in July 2009 when Mr Abdelrazik was reunited with his children in Montreal. It was a moment I’ll never forget. When he later asked if I would help to bring a claim for damages for these egregious violations of his rights, I agreed. I didn’t imagine I would still be fighting this case over 15 years later."
Canada has a loathsome history of rendering Muslim citizens to torture abroad and being complicit in their torture. The case of Abousfian Abdlerazik is the first time such a case is scheduled for a trial.
When a combination of civic action and a court action successfully brought him home in 2009, Abdelrazik told the Globe and Mail a “ chilling account of six years of imprisonment and forced exile abroad… Mr. Abdelrazik recounted stories of interrogation and alleged torture. He told of Canadian Security and Intelligence Service agents laughingly saying "Sudan will be your Guantanamo" when he begged to be allowed to return home.
His ordeal - described as Kafkaesque by the federal court judge who ordered him repatriated - is far from ended. But the Harper government made it clear that Mr. Abdelrazik couldn't expect any support in his efforts to remove his name from the UN list.
Mr. Abdelrazik said one of the two CSIS interrogators was the same agent who questioned him at his home two days before he flew to Khartoum in March of 2003. Mr. Abdelrazik said he had called the Montreal police to get the CSIS agents to leave.
"One of them, he turned and said to me, 'You will see…' " he said.
Although CSIS denies it arranged for Mr. Abdelrazik to be imprisoned in Sudan, heavily redacted government documents say he was arrested "at our request," meaning Canada's.
After months in solitary with little food and occasional torture, Mr. Abdelrazik said one day his Sudanese jailers told him the "Canadian muhabarat want to talk to me," using the feared Arabic term for secret police.
Mr. Abdelrazik says he was taken to a room with a table laden "with cakes and fruits and juice and bottles of water," but before he could say anything, one of the CSIS agents said, "Remember I told you in Montreal that 'You will see,' … and now, you will see."
Mr. Abdelrazik said he begged to be allowed to go home and offered to face any charges the agents wanted to press.
"I am not going to help a terrorist," the CSIS agent replied, according to Mr. Abdelrazik. The agent added that Mr. Abdelrazik was "Sudanese, not a Canadian, and should stay in Sudan forever."
"My country doesn't need you," the CSIS agent said. After the two left, Mr. Abdelrazik said the worst period of torture and abuse began.

Stay in touch at Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, tasc@web.ca 

https://www.facebook.com/events/856041686712579

Some background videos and history:


In May 2009, 225 people defied Canadian law and purchased an airline ticket for Abousfian Abdelrazik. He had been tortured in Sudan with Canadian complicity. He was prevented from coming home by Ottawa because of CSIS lies about state security. CSIS had told Abdelrazik "Sudan will be your Guantanamo." Ottawa issued a warning: anyone providing financial support to Abdelrazik risked prosecution and 10 years imprisonment.
As Abdelrazik occupied a cot at the Canadian embassy for over a year, groups like Project Fly Home and Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture worked to bring him home. Finally, when then Global Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon refused to issue travel documents (and failed to have us charged), Mr. Abdelrazik's law\yers (Yavar Hameed, Paul Champ, Audrey Brousseau, Halid M. Elgazza) went to Federal Court and won a repatriation order. Canadians have a right to return home.
The day before court, the Wizard of Oz characters took to the streets with hundreds to chant There's No Place Like Home, including Murray Lumley (Tin Person), Tom Smarda (Scarecrow), Beth Guthrie (Glinda the Good Witch), Matthew Behrens (Cowardly Lion) and Kirsten Romaine (Dorothy Gale).

Video of that event:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMIvK4AFMDw&t=265s
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-BKbR6pmw
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62sGo6AHvW8
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ZjygBoLC0
Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gTjSZhPcCM
Part 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVuOoaiqSeM

An Ottawa Rally at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stLm8c1vhq0

Abdelrazik arrives in Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN7LXisOUE

Interview with Abousfian after he was home and trying to get off the UN 1267 List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftG47TXoh_E

Abousfian speaks at House of Commons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xxZTmzrJlM

When the CLC gave Abousfian a sanctions-busting salary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egRcxb0FAYU

Abousfian Abdelrazik talks about why he should be taken off the United Nations' terror watch list as shown to the UN sanctions committee in New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aD46CTW0KI

Documents suggest Canada's spies lied to Sudan to keep an innocent man in prison, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewb4WzS0DFI

Part 1of the Abdelrazik Speaking Tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7tm322hFRg
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVX2nbA7mHI
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7lcWYWvIA4
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvIn4hHwxP0

Prism TV Documentary, 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih19ndPVaTs



Sunday, August 4, 2024

A Midsummer Night's Request to Support Homes not Bombs' Work with Refugees, Detainees, Survivors of Male Violence  and more!




Friends,

As MPs gather for self-congratulatory BBQs, we remain busy on a number of projects to stop deportations, win entry permits for Afghan refugees, push the Canadian government to end its “None is Too Many” policies preventing the evacuation of Palestinian Canadians’ loved ones from Gaza, repatriate 20 Canadian men, women & children held under conditions akin to torture in Syria, and supporting those wrongfully forced behind bars because they are Indigenous or women who have chosen to survive against male violence. As always we remain committed to transforming our war economy into one that meets human needs. 
 
This is our daily work, and we put our hearts into it. So much so that we rarely find the time to fundraise. We survive on a shoestring, but the shoestring in 2024 is stretched thin and frazzled.
 
Our caseloads are higher than they have ever been, and our all-consuming campaign work is exhausting our limited resources. Despite its lofty rhetoric, the federal government continues to perpetuate misery for far too many.
 
This is why we are sending out this rare mid-summer appeal for your financial assistance to help us keep going.
 
For over 25 years, the Homes not Bombs campaigns have been an indispensable bulwark against state-sponsored injustices. 

Our Women Who Choose to Live campaign supports women criminalized because they defended themselves against male violence.

The Rural Refugee Rights Network pursues creative strategies to open more doors for those fleeing violence and persecution while preventing the detention and deportation of those who have every right to stay. The Anne Frank Sanctuary Committee opens safe spaces for those being forced back to situations of grave danger.

The Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture campaign has taken a lead role in confronting Canada’s shocking complicity in the arbitrary detention and torture of 20 Canadians illegally detained for years without charge in Northeast Syria (32 have been brought back due to intense campaigning), while continuing its work to end secret trials and deportations to torture of security certificate detainees.

Homes not Bombs has always worked to eliminate the roots of institutional and interpersonal violence through education, nonviolent direct action, and accompaniment with the most vulnerable. For many years, that has meant focusing on creative means of ending Canada's contribution to global inequality and violence (an insidious combination that includes massive Canadian corporate investment in the Global South accompanied by the production and sales of weapons to "protect" those investments and maintain global inequality.)

Much of our work has sought to transform the institutions that create displacement while we work directly with the displaced – refugees fleeing violence, women and kids fleeing male violence in the home, Indigenous land and water defenders facing the ongoing dispossession of their lands, and the disproportionate numbers of Indigenous people caged in Canadian prisons
 
We are a modest outfit that makes a big difference through education, solidarity, and direct action. With your support, we can continue doing so.
 
We hope you can consider a donation to get us through to the end of what will remain a very busy year. You can send an etransfer to tasc@web.ca or mail a cheque to Homes not Bombs at 2583 Carling Avenue, Unit M052, Ottawa, ON K2B 7H7.
 
Thanks as always for your support. We promise to stay in trouble – good trouble!
 
Peace
 
Matthew Behrens
Homes not Bombs
 
PS: The picture below is of my mother, Deborah Cass, a troublemaker and brilliant performer (here at the Stratford Festival in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960) who would approve of this appeal. There is so much rich language in Shakespeare, and I share this quote from that play since it reminds me of the work that we do: dreaming and then creating things that we have been told are illegal, impossible, impractical. But we know better. Which is why we keep going on. 
 
 “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.”







 

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Pick a Day to Join the Chain Fast to Free the Canadian Captives June 1 to 19, 2024





























“Feed the Hungry. Visit the Sick. Set Free the Captives.” – Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)

 

(Details on how to join the fast for a day or more are below, as are actions you can take even if you are not fasting!)

INTRODUCTION
Please pick a day to fast in support of immediately freeing and bringing home 19 arbitrarily detained Canadian Muslim men, women, and children, including the longest-held detainee at 7+ years, Jack Letts. All of them are illegally held without charge in northeastern Syrian jails and prison camps under conditions the United Nations describes as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.” 

 

Their jailers have called on Canada to come and take these long-suffering detainees home. Yet Canada refuses.

 

Justice Henry Brown of the Federal Court stated in December 2022: “Canadians are dying or at risk of dying every day this matter is adjourned.” Every moment of delay increases the risk for the children, men and women.

 

This 19-day chain fast will represent the 9 men, 3 women, and 7 children who belong in Canada. Due to public and legal pressure, Canada has repatriated 32 people from NE Syria, but refuses to budge on the remaining detainees, despite the April, 2024 report of Amnesty International that finds detainees "are facing systematic violations and dying in large numbers due to inhumane conditions.” 

BACKGROUND

US President Joe Biden, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the US State Dept., leading United States generals, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Save the Children, and even a House of Commons committee have called for repatriation of all detainees. But a Canadian government long complicit in the torture of its Muslim citizens held abroad has refused to lift a finger to help, even as far smaller and less resourced countries from Kazakhstan to Bosnia and Herzegovina have had no trouble bringing their nationals home. 

 

Ottawa has rightfully invested $3 million towards the repatriation of Iraqi citizens detained in Syria, but when it comes to its own citizens, Ottawa’s only response has been to create a bureaucratic “framework” marinated with insufferable bafflegab that makes it impossible for anyone to come home.  

 

When it comes to Canadian Muslims detained abroad under conditions of torture, Canada has always assumed guilt and been a complicit partner in criminalizing and torturing them. Two judicial inquiries and numerous Federal and Supreme Court decisions have found Canada complicit in the torture of Canadian Muslims abroad over the past two decades. 

 

In addition, the Canadian government, taking a page from its own history of genocidal violence against Indigenous people, is engaged in an insidious process by which it seeks to separate the imprisoned babies and young kids from their moms and dads. Family separation – especially based on racist lies – is never acceptable.

 

As a result, it’s up to those of us who can speak up to do so with public actions like this chain fast.  The chain fast will run during the final few weeks of this Parliamentary sitting.


WHY A FAST?

Fasting has long been a tool to raise awareness both in our communities and within ourselves. When you fast, and your body asks when nutrition will eventually arrive, it is a reminder of a cruel reality. Unlike those of us who fast for a day – and know that what we need for our health is coming soon – for many who hunger for justice, they simply do not know when the decision that will soothe their souls and provide peace of mind will arrive. That uncertainty, which can be indefinite, produces anxiety and trauma. When you fast in support of the Canadian captives, it provides moral support to the families of the detainees and reminds them that they are not alone. It also sends an important message to the Canadian government that you recognize the humanity and the rights of those detained (the very things Canada wants us to dismiss). It also helps spread the word about an injustice that needs to be remedied as soon as possible.


HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CHAIN FAST
a) Pick a day (or a series of days) to fast during June 1 to 19, 2024 and email your name and town to tasc@web.ca so we can add it to the list.

 

b) A list of open dates and names is available at https://homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/2024/05/pick-day-to-join-chain-fast-to-free.html


c) More than one person can fast on the same date.

d) Fast according to your preferred tradition (a full 24 hours, liquids only, sun up to sun down).

e) The fast is open to anyone (you can join even if you are not living in Canada). Even if you cannot fast, we encourage you to do these actions below!


On the day they fast we encourage you to:

1.  take a selfie with a simple message (ie, #FreeThe19, Free the Canadian Captives, Canada Complicit in Arbitrary Detention, Bring Our Loved Ones Home etc.) and share that image via social media, explaining why you are fasting on that day. Email us the image at tasc@web.ca so we can share it too.

 

b. Write an email (sample below) to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc to explain why you are fasting. Also, please call Joly at 613-992-0983 and urge her to put an end to this humanitarian nightmare for 19 Canadian men, women and children in NE Syria, and finally bring them home.

 

c. Write a letter to a local newspaper about why you are fasting.

 

d. Fast for an hour in front of your MP’s office.


e. Share this petition: You can copy and paste this link on your social media and email it to your friends as well! https://www.change.org/p/canadians-are-dying-free-jack-letts-43-canadian-kids-women-men-in-syria

 
Thanks for your support!

 

Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture 

 


++++++++++++


 SAMPLE EMAIL (be sure to include the CC-ed MPs and add your own MP if they are not already listed below!)

 

(Feel free to personalize with your own statement imagining what it would be like to know your loved ones are condemned to these brutal camps and prisons and the Canadian government is refusing to lift a finger for them. Use a creative subject line as well that does not make your email look like it is computer-generated!)

 

To: Melanie.Joly@parl.gc.caMelanie.Joly@international.gc.ca

CC:  pam.damoff@parl.gc.carob.oliphant@parl.gc.camichael.chong@parl.gc.cayasir.naqvi@parl.gc.casameer.zuberi@parl.gc.ca,  Stephane.Bergeron@parl.gc.caRachel.Bendayan@parl.gc.caHedy.Fry@parl.gc.catasc@web.caHeather.McPherson@parl.gc.caalistair.macgregor@parl.gc.ca , Randeep.Sarai@parl.gc.caChandra.Arya@parl.gc.caPeter.Schiefke@parl.gc.ca,  Kamal.Khera@parl.gc.ca,  Salma.Zahid@parl.gc.caIqra.khalid@parl.gc.caJoel.Lightbound@parl.gc.caRuby.Sahota@parl.gc.caMajid.Jowhari@parl.gc.ca,  pm@pm.gc.ca,  ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@canada.ca , jagmeet.singh@parl.gc.camarc.miller@parl.gc.ca, dominic.leblanc@parl.gc.ca

 

Dear Ministers Joly and Leblanc,

 

I am fasting today as part of a 19-day Chain Fast to Free the Canadian Captives who remain illegally detained in NE Syria because you refuse to bring them home. You must make immediate arrangements to bring home these long-suffering children, women and men.

 

Notably, 32 Canadians have been brought home, but almost always because of the threat of court action. For the remaining 19, they continue to suffer appalling conditions of arbitrary detention, with the April 2024 Amnesty International report finding detainees "are facing systematic violations and dying in large numbers due to inhumane conditions."  

Eighteen months ago, Justice Henry Brown of the Federal Court stated in December 2022: “Canadians are dying or at risk of dying every day this matter is adjourned.” Every moment of your delay increases the risk for the children, men and women, not only from the effects of arbitrary detention but also from ongoing bombings of the area by Turkish drones and fighter jets.  

 

Canada has the necessary contacts on the ground in northeast Syria. It has the support of the world’s most powerful military, American Forces who remain on the ground. Most importantly, it has the consent and clear request of Kurdish authorities who hold the Canadians. 

 

In addition, you and your colleague, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, must also grant temporary resident permits to bring to Canada the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children, since your notorious Policy Framework clearly states you will not separate children from parents. I was horrified to learn that Global Affairs Canada has delivered four separate, traumatizing ultimatums to these mothers to either give up their children and possibly never see them again, or to keep them in these camps where conditions are akin to torture.

 

I am also disappointed that the Canadian government has repeatedly used unsubstantiated “national security” concerns to justify its failure to assist these Muslim Canadians in coming home. Justice Brown clearly wrote, “Notably the [government] Respondents do not allege any of the Applicants [detainees] engaged in or assisted in terrorist activities. The Respondents affirmed this position at the hearing.” He also stated there was no evidence before the court that anyone had committed offences contrary to Canadian law. Last month, we learned from media reports that Canada would not bring home a mother of six simply because there was nothing to charge her with!

 

“The primacy of the right to return to Canada is reinforced in Canadian law,” Justice Brown wrote in his January 2023 decision. “This is also a critical factor in this Judgment. Simply put, there is no known offence in Canada that carries with it exile or banishment as a penal consequence,” yet both by Canadian actions and conscious inaction, exile or banishment were plainly the result for Canadians stuck in northeast Syria. Indeed, Brown carefully cited jurisprudence that Section 6(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – whose 40th anniversary you celebrated 2 years ago – “forbids the executive from frustrating the rights of Canadians to enter and return whether by executive actions taken in Canada or abroad.”

 

For too long, you have frustrated and denied the rights of these Muslim Canadians.  

 

Minister Joly, in other instances of citizens in trouble abroad, you have spoken of your responsibility to assist them. 


On April 25, 2023 you declared regarding Sudan: "What's really important is that Canadians know that they can count on their government and Global Affairs Canada to help them …. We are on this and we will make sure that every Canadian is coming back and is safe.” On April 27, 2023, you declared: “My job is to get Canadians out of Sudan.” On October 12, 2023, you declared: “We are committed to supporting Canadians abroad.” On October 30, 2023, you stated regarding citizens trapped in Gaza: “As a government, we have a duty to bring them to safety.” 

 

Please do your job. End your complicity in arbitrary detention, bring everyone home. 
 
Name
Town/City


+++++++++++++++++++


SAMPLE Call (feel free to use your own wording)
Mélanie Joly
613-992-0983 (Ottawa office)
514-383-3709 (Montreal office)

You may or may not get an answering machine (if you do, please leave a message).


Hi, my name is XXXXXXXX and I'm calling from XXXXXXX. I am fasting today as part of a chain fast to call for you to repatriate 19 men, women and children from arbitrary detention in Northeast Syria. Your government has already brought back 32 Canadians from these deplorable camps and prisons. There is no reason for you to prevent the return of everyone else, especially since their lives are at risk every day you delay. 
I am calling on Ms. Joly to immediately bring everyone home – all Canadians and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children. Thank you.

 



Those Fasting

Saturday, June 1: Noor Akram, Edmonton, AB
Sunday, June 2: Debora Skelton, Halifax, NS    
Monday, June 3: Dan Ebbs, London, ON 
Tuesday, June 4: Ron Sallars, Toronto, ON
Wednesday, June 5: Dawn Best, Perth, ON  
Thursday, June 6: Matthew Behrens, Ottawa, ON
Friday, June 7: Larry Davids, Chicago, IL
Saturday, June 8: Mary Cowper-Smith, PEI
Sunday, June 9: Ben Loring, NY
Monday, June 10: Matthew Behrens, Ottawa, ON
Tuesday, June 11: Mary Cowper-Smith, PEI
Wednesday, June 12: Eleanor Cowan, Edmonton, AB
Thursday, June 13: Brian Burch, Toronto, ON
Friday, June 14: Jerry Bergman, Vancouver, BC
Saturday, June 15: Christine Thomas, Seattle, WA
Sunday, June 16: Marcia Perryman, Hastings, ON
Monday, June 17:
Tuesday, June 18:
Wednesday, June 19: