Guantanamo Diary Reveals Canadian Complicity in Torture

(April CCPA Monitor)

By Matthew Behrens

            Following December’s release of the U.S. Senate report on American complicity in torture, Prime Minister Stephen Harper quickly declared, “It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada.” Despite the CIA’s close relationship with Canadian state security agencies – as well as two judicial inquiries finding Ottawa complicit in the torture of Canadian citizens in Syria and Egypt – Harper preferred to ignore the facts.

            At the same time, a stunning memoir was published that paints another damning portrait of Canadian authorities from even before 9/11. Guantanamo Diary – originally composed by hand in 2005 from a cell at the infamous U.S. torture camp that remains open despite President Obama’s promise to close it 8 years ago – is the remarkable story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who remains detained there despite a 2010 U.S. release order.

            Learning English by listening to his kidnappers and torturers, Slahi elegantly relates a tale of human resilience under the most appalling conditions. Filled with wisdom, humour, and heartbreaking moments of despair produced by unending months of round-the-clock torture, the memoir was classified secret, becoming the subject of a six-year legal battle for its release. It contains countless redactions from single words to whole pages, but in a remarkable comment on the cultural shift that has come to accept torture as reasonable and inevitable, most of the sections detailing his brutalization appear intact.

Slahi’s troubles began in Montreal in 2000, where, after 12 years in Germany, he lived as a Canadian permanent resident for just over two months. At the time, he was subject to an RCMP/CSIS “disruption” campaign of harassment: two cameras were implanted in the wall of his Montreal room, and he was followed in an obvious manner “to give the message that we are watching you.” Slahi’s very first interrogation was at the hands of the RCMP, and “I was scared to hell” as he was questioned about a fellow Montrealer he’d never met: Ahmed Ressam, who was eventually convicted in the U.S. for a “Millennium Plot” to bomb the Los Angeles Airport.

Flying home to Mauritania, Slahi was intercepted and twice detained at the behest of U.S. officials, first in Senegal and then Mauritania, repeatedly interrogated about alleged involvement in the Millennium Plot. Released in February, 2000, Slahi was again arrested in September 2001, questioned, cleared, and released. In one 2000 Mauritanian interrogation, Slahi recalled that things seemed to be going smoothly, “but when they opened the Canadian file, things soured decidedly.” Significantly, this illustrates how Canadian state agencies were participating in the U.S.-led rendition-to-torture program at least 20 months before 9/11, which contradicts CSIS and RCMP claims that similar human rights violations they committed in 2002 and 2003 were mistakes resulting from confusion and fear after 9/11, as opposed to a Standard Operating Procedure that was clearly employed against Slahi.

            Indeed, readers familiar with Canadian human rights abuses against Arab Muslims will recognize in Slahi’s memoir a similar pattern that reveals the dangers of “information sharing,” “intelligence” data dumps that are full of inflammatory and false allegations, “cooperation” with secret police, and using the fruits of torture.

            Slahi’s decision to voluntarily show up for another round of Mauritanian police questioning in November 2001 led to his self-described rendition world tour: Jordan, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the human hellhole reserved for “the worst of the worst” which, by the time Slahi arrived in 2002, was found by an LA Times investigation to detain “no big fish,” but instead hundreds of innocents who had been turned in by Afghan bounty hunters seeking rewards from Americans who paid good money and never confirmed the truthfulness of the hunters’ allegations. Indeed, as Associated Press reported in 2013, there were ongoing efforts between 2002 and 2005 to recruit Gitmo detainees as spies and double agents. Slahi himself describes a facility where intelligence agents came from around the world – including Canada – to interrogate their “nationals” or refugees who had escaped their clutches.

The basis for Slahi’s detention appears to be two-fold: in U.S. eyes, he fit the profile of an alleged threat because be fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1991-92 with a little-known, U.S.-funded group called Al Qaeda. Although Slahi left in 1992, a distant cousin, Abu Hafs, became a member of the group’s shura council; opposing the 9/11 attacks, Abu Hafs served some time under Iranian house arrest, and is now a free man.

With those two links providing no traction, it appears that the sole basis for his detention is the alleged Millennium plot connection, even though the plot’s singular member, Ahmed Ressam, never implicated Slahi when he freely cooperated with U.S. authorities (and later recanted about those he did try to implicate). Canadian security agencies notoriously lost track of Ressam, who was only caught because of an attentive U.S. border guard.

 “Canadian intelligence wishes I were a criminal, so they could make up for their failure when [NAME REDACTED, but clearly Ressam] slipped from their country to the U.S. carrying explosives,” Slahi writes. “The U.S. blamed Canada for being a preparation ground for terrorist attacks against the U.S., and that’s why Canadians Intels freaked out. They really lost their composure, trying everything to calm the rage of their big brother, the U.S. They began watching the people they believed to be bad, including me.”

            As in most cases of Canadian targeting and profiling over the past two decades, Slahi is the victim of alleged guilt by association, no matter how many degrees of separation. Like Ottawa’s Maher Arar, who was the subject of a massive data dump of inflammatory falsehoods that, shared with the Americans, led to Arar’s being branded a threat and a target for Syrian torture, Slahi writes: “I stayed less than two months in Canada, and yet the Americans claimed that the Canadians provided tons of information. The Canadians don’t even know me!” Notably, the Germans provided nothing for Slahi’s interrogations.

“All the Canadians could come up with was, ‘We have seen him with x and y, and they’re bad people.’ ‘We’ve seen him in this and that mosque.’ ‘We have intercepted his telephone conversations, but there’s nothing really.’ The Americans asked the Canadians to provide them the transcripts of my conversations, but after they edited them.” Without providing the full conversations – which Slahi believes Canada should have refused anyhow – there is no opportunity to provide context, and so the Americans fixated on what they believed were two code words in his phone calls: tea and sugar.

            One interrogator tells Slahi “your only problem is your time in Canada. If you really haven’t done anything in Canada, you don’t belong in jail.”  He is also interrogated by one of the men who interrogated Canadian teenager Omar Khadr after the youngster had been “softened up” by weeks of torture.

            The Canadian Slahi file must be bulging with references to Canadians who may have unwittingly suffered surveillance, interrogation, and detention. To cite one of many possible examples – he describes writing out over 1,000 pages of false confessions to try and end the torture at Gitmo – Slahi agreed that he planned to blow up Toronto’s CN Tower, even though he had no clue what it was. Did this “confession” lead to RCMP/CSIS targeting of Canadian Kassim Mohamed after this father of five took photos of the landmark to share with his children, then living in Egypt? That targeting certainly caused Mohamed’s harrowing two-week detention in Egyptian custody during a 2004 family visit.

 How many other people in Canada had cases built around such tortured “confessions? Slahi continues, “Whenever they asked me about somebody in Canada I had some incriminating information about that person even if I didn’t know him,” noting that use of the phrases “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” only invited more torture. Threatened with being disappeared forever, he “took the pen and paper and wrote all kinds of incriminating lies about a poor person who was just seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he could start a family. Moreover, he is handicapped.” He feels horrible, taking solace that “I didn’t hurt anybody as much as I did myself [and] that I had no choice [and] I was confident that injustice will be defeated.”

            The torturous act of “confession” about things and people he knows nothing about was the culmination of endless rounds of sleep deprivation, sexual assault, beatings, immersion in severe cold, humiliation, degradation, and a starvation diet. The psychological war – informing Slahi his mother is detained at Gitmo and likely to be violated in the all-male environment – is all-pervasive, but throughout, he maintains a combination of defiance (refusing to speak or throwing snarky replies at his interrogators) and spirituality, even though he is forbidden to pray and punished when he tries to do so.  “I hate torture so much,” he writes, adding waiting for torture is worse than torture itself.

            Remarkably, Slahi maintains a sense of ironic humour, comparing his huge number of interrogations to the list of women Charlie Sheen has dated, and likening the repetitive nature of interrogation to the Hollywood film Groundhog Day. He develops relationships with his guards, debating religion and popular culture; one guard cries shamefully when he leaves Guantanamo, believing that he will go to hell because he prevented Slahi from praying. Others have Slahi fix their VCRs and PCs. Slahi’s ocean of tears is one day interrupted with paroxysms of laughter when he reads what he declares “such a funny book”: The Catcher in the Rye.

            Over 6 years, Slahi estimates 100 different interrogators, including Canadian agents, had a go at him. “You know that I know that you know that I have done  nothing,” he tells one American. “You’re holding me because your country is strong enough to be unjust. And it’s not the first time you have kidnapped Africans and enslaved them.”

Is Slahi still at Gitmo 13 years after because Canadian intelligence agencies don’t want him released? Could holding him be quid pro quo for Canada accepting Omar Khadr and taking that PR nightmare off American hands? Unfortunately, Slahi’s attempt to secure disclosure of his RCMP/CSIS files, as well as notes from Canada’s Gitmo interrogations, was turned down by a Canadian Federal Court judge, who ruled the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not extend to him, even though it was two months in  Canada that led to Slahi’s nightmare. The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Slahi’s subsequent appeal to find out what Canada actually has on him, if anything.

Canadians wondering what the future will look like with passage of new anti-terrorism legislation, C-51, have another frightening roadmap with Slahi’s must-read memoir.

  

Productive Week for Canada’s Desk Torturers

Productive Week for Canada’s Desk Torturers

May 15, 2014

By Matthew Behrens

                  Two judicial decisions released last week remind us that the concept of national security is incompatible with democracy: the former almost always trumps the latter, and various enemies-du-jour are regularly created and then served up on the altar of “security.” In each instance, profoundly disturbing decisions were dealt to Mohamed Harkat, facing deportation to torture in Algeria based on secret hearsay, and Hassan Diab, facing extradition to France on clearly trumped up allegations likely gleaned from torture.

                  When doubts are raised about the fragility of democratic rights, the national security state relies on its courts to provide legal reassurance that torture, indefinite detention without charge, secret trials, overseas military occupation, the iron curtain of governmental secrecy, and other crimes of state can be rationalized as necessary byproducts of certain organizations’ duly-authorized mandates.

                  In Canada, both individual judges and courts have served this role most obediently. Their decisions almost unanimously start from the proposition that scandal-plagued bodies like CSIS, the RCMP, and the Department of Justice are composed of well-intentioned functionaries who may, in moments of excessive zeal, cross some boundaries. Although those crossed boundaries implicate Canadian officials in severe human rights violations, no one is ever held to account. Consider that despite two judicial inquiries finding Canadian complicity in the torture of four of its own citizens – a complicity usually overseen by Justice Department lawyers – no one has been charged, much less tried, for their involvement in torture. Rather, complicit individuals have received promotions (http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=20490e79-ee5b-4cc7-bdb9-46870e4cf3e0) or otherwise retired from public life and are now serving as commentators for the CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/As+It+Happens/Features/ID/2431990227/) or receiving puff profiles in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2007/05/26/extop_spy_breaks_silence.html)

                  In the Harkat and Diab cases, judges have again closed ranks behind the national security state, protecting the technocrats who, like the notorious Schreibtischtäter –  desk murderers of the Nazi era –  do not have to wipe the blood from their hands, as they simply shift paper about, blithely disconnected from the human wreckage they cause. Canada’s desk torturers work at such institutions as the Canadian Border Services Agency, the RCMP, CSIS, and Communications Security Establishment, all of whose employees operate under the rubric of internal memos that have directed them to exchange information with foreign intelligence agencies even when there is a “substantial risk” of torture. Canada’s War Department is the latest to join their ranks (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tories-secretly-gave-canadian-military-ok-to-share-info-despite-torture-risk-1.2608713). Needless to say, such memos have been given the go-ahead by Justice Department lawyers. At the same time, CSIS itself acknowledged in a 2008 memo that if torture-tainted intelligence were dismissed, the secret trial regime would collapse. (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/12/03/csis-letter-torture-canada-public-safety_n_1127501.html)

Harkat: Still No Right to See the Case

                  In last week’s Harkat ruling, the Supreme Court clearly got it wrong. The decision appears to have been written on the run, without due consideration of last October’s full-day argument by intervening groups on issues from racial and religious profiling to complicity in torture and secrecy creep undermining immigration proceedings. It is at times shockingly illogical and contradicts its landmark 2007 Charkaoui ruling that found the security certificate regime unconstitutional because it denied the detainee the right to know and meet the case against him.

                  The secret system considered by the court in 2006 is largely the same one that exists now, with the exception of one significant change, the introduction of security-cleared lawyers called special advocates who can see some of the secret case but cannot speak with the detainee about what is revealed behind closed doors. Thus, the individual affected still cannot properly instruct counsel about what is being heard in his absence. Special advocates, which essentially saved the secret trial regime, were brought in courtesy of some high-profile, liberal immigration lawyers and the Federal Court itself, and passed Parliament with the full backing of the Liberals. Their current leader, Justin Trudeau, spoke last week both of his love of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and also of how he thought the Charter-violating Supreme Court ruling was a good one. http://globalnews.ca/video/1331197/trudeau-welcomes-supreme-courts-clear-decision-on-mohamed-harkat/)

                  In Charkaoui, the Court remarked that “one cannot be sure that the judge has been exposed to the whole factual picture.” That has not changed: Harkat cannot comment on, much less instruct the special advocates, on something he is not allowed to know or see. As the court said then (and seems to ignore now), “without full disclosure and full participation throughout the process, he or she may not be in a position to put forward a full legal argument,” and that without disclosure (especially in this case), “the named person may not be in a position to contradict errors, identify omissions, challenge the credibility of informants or refute false allegations.” Indeed, since that named person does not know what has been put against him or her, “he or she does not know what the designated judge needs to hear.” Ultimately, nothing has changed: “How can one meet a case one does not know?” the Court asked in 2007, and should have asked again in 2014.

                  Harkat continues to face deportation to torture in Algeria because Federal Court judge Simon Noel unjustifiably believes that Harkat lied. Noel heard things about Harkat in secret that Harkat knows nothing about, and after Harkat answered certain questions in public, Noel decided that he preferred the uncontested hearsay heard in secrecy. We know that this hearsay is uncontested because a key plank of Harkat’s Supreme Court appeal was based on the fact that when his special advocates sought to cross-examine informants during a secret session – which would seem an obvious thing to do given that one of them had failed a lie detector test, a fact CSIS deliberately withheld from the court for over a decade – they were turned down. Noel said the informants deserved “informer privilege.” As the Supreme Court noted in its decision, the polygraph test on one source “revealed him or her to be untruthful.” So why wouldn’t the special advocates be allowed to cross-examine someone with this mark against them? The Court replies that there is nothing to worry about, because the hearsay evidence will be accepted only if a judge concludes it is “reliable and appropriate.”

Supreme Court Sides With CSIS

                  But how can a judge independently come to that conclusion when hearing only one side of the story, without the benefit of a fully briefed lawyer cross-examining the source of that hearsay? The deference shown to CSIS here is remarkable: the Supreme Court worries that if CSIS sources had to testify, even in secret session, this may have a chilling effect on the agency’s “ability to recruit new sources.” This despite ongoing reports from targetted communities indicate that most potential CSIS “sources” would hardly be reliable since they are coerced into spying in exchange for status in Canada. Indeed, one source in the Harkat case appears to have had special inspiration to continue producing “intelligence” because he carried on a torrid affair with the CSIS agent handling him.

                  While the Supreme Court found that CSIS sources did not enjoy informer privilege, they try to have it both ways by then declaring there is no “unlimited ability to interview and cross-examine human sources.” The ruling states that such examination should rarely if ever be allowed and, without any explanation whatsoever, concludes there is no reason to allow Harkat’s special advocates to cross-examine the secret informants whose allegations were used against him. The Court is satisfied that “the admission of hearsay evidence or the denial of the opportunity for special advocates to cross-examine sources do not render” the scheme unconstitutional. 

                  Further, the Supreme Court ruled in a remarkably illogical moment that while the destruction of all original notes and transcripts of recordings in the Harkat case violated his Charter rights, there was no problem, because Judge Noel “reasoned that the summaries of the conversations were prepared in a way that ensured their accuracy.” Yet how would he know this if he had not seen the original documents, examined the translator, and had cross-examination to test for reliability, accuracy, and the biases inherent to the process?

                  The court also criticized the government for wanting a secret hearing at the Supreme Court level, complaining “it only served to foster an appearance of opacity of these proceedings, which runs contrary to the fundamental principles of transparency and accountability.” Fine words, but why has the court not released a transcript of the closed proceedings for all to see?

Why Not Charge Him If a Case Exists?

                  Like other secret trial detainees, Harkat has always argued that if the government actually has a case, he should be charged in an open court with a fair trial. The government claimed Harkat’s lack of citizenship prevented them from charging him under the Criminal Code (with its higher standards of proof and procedural protections), yet the recent VIA Rail plot (alleged to have been planned by two non-citizens) is proceeding under the auspices not of the immigration act’s security certificate regime, but under the criminal code.

                  The Supreme Court is well aware of this glaring difference, even acknowledging in last week’s decision that the secret trial regime is “in some respects more advantageous for the state than criminal proceedings. It has a lower standard of proof and is more protective of confidential national security information than the criminal law.” The Court even acknowledges but does not act on the fact that a citizen facing such serious allegations is entitled to a balancing act that considers state secrecy and individual rights, but this does not exist for non-citizens. There is no further comment on this two-tiered justice, other than to adopt a Father Know Best approach that tells Harkat: you have to trust the judge, who has broad discretion to look after your rights and make sure you are “reasonably informed” of the case. Ironically, that is exactly what the Federal Court judges were saying before this process was found to be unconstitutional: trust us. Thus, the Supreme Court has taken a major step backwards, concluding Harkat knows the case because the judge says he does. End of story.  When so much rides on a discretion that can only be exercised on a case by case basis, the lack of solid legal precision means whether one wins or loses may come down to the pick of the judge.

                  Harkat has a long legal road ahead of him, and his ultimate fate will once again rest with the Supreme Court, which will have to decide whether Canada will respect the absolute prohibition on deportation to torture, a legal obligation that the Supreme Court refused to uphold in the infamous 2002 Suresh decision by claiming certain “exceptional circumstances” could justify sending someone to face electric shock on the genitals.

Diab Enters Kafka Land

                  Both the security certificate regimes of 2007 and of 2013 contain the exact same section that allows a judge to admit into evidence and base a ruling on anything not normally admissible in a court of law. This means, therefore, that Harkat and anyone else subject to the secret trial process never has been and never will be in a court of law. It’s a problematic netherworld that also seriously impacts Dr. Hassan Diab, whose battle to stop extradition to France for a crime he did not commit suffers from similarly low legal standards that are ultimately based on the political prerogatives of Canada’s national security state. How else to explain the fact that he continues to face an uphill legal battle even though finger and palm prints, handwriting, and physical descriptions of the alleged suspect in a 1980 bombing do not match those of Dr. Diab?

                  Last week’s dreadful Ontario Court of Appeal (OCA) decision dismissed the well-reasoned arguments of Diab’s legal team with remarkably similar reasons to those of the Supreme Court: judges must be allowed major discretion; the intelligence agencies of our extradition partners do not engage in nefarious activities because they have signed treaties; and even though Dr. Diab has yet to be charged with an offence, he is told to trust the French and sort things out from an overseas prison.

                  France has been trying to flex its anti-terrorism muscle with respect to the 1980 Rue Copernic bombing, pursuing a case against Diab that a Canadian judge  found “weak”, “suspect,” and “confusing,” and “the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial, seem unlikely.” Unfortunately, that same judge ordered the extradition of Dr. Diab because the standards are so low and inconsistently applied in different Canadian jurisdictions.   Indeed, the appeals court quotes the reality that “trial judges, properly applying the relevant principles in the exercise of their discretion, could in some situations come to different conclusions,” which is what appears to have occurred here.

Diab Sought Without Being Charged

                  Equally problematic is the fact that, as the OCA points out, “It is well settled that the [Extradition] Act does not allow the extradition of a person for mere investigative purposes. Extradition is not to be used as a tool by foreign states to question people as potential witnesses or suspects.” Yet that is precisely the position in which Diab finds himself. The OCA also notes the case against Diab is “circumstantial,” and that four of the five pieces of evidence offered to demand his extradition were “insufficient” to justify uprooting his life, with the fifth piece a highly discredited handwriting report almost dismissed by the trial judge because it was “highly susceptible to criticism and impeachment” and relied on “questionable methods and on an analysis that seems very problematic.”

                  So why has the case proceeded? Because under Canada’s extradition law, the duty of a Canadian court and the Minister of Justice is, first and foremost, to the government seeking an individual’s extradition, and as the Supreme Court of Canada has found, extradition is, in the end, not a legal issue, but a political decision: is the government of Canada willing to risk its relations with one of its extradition partners, or is it willing to sacrifice one of its citizens (or a refugee or permanent resident who is also sought) in the name of maintaining happy diplomacy?

                  In the same manner that Mr. Harkat has been told by the Supreme Court that he needs to trust in the judge hearing the case without him, Diab is similarly instructed to grin and bear it because Canada cannot be seen to mistrust the judicial system of a democratic country. Yet Human Rights Watch has criticized French counter-terrorism courts for relying on secret intelligence from countries known to routinely use torture. When the Canadian Minister of Justice was asked to seek assurances that the French did not in fact carry on in such a manner, he instead figured he needn’t ask because he concluded Diab had not made a “plausible connection” to the fact that torture-derived intelligence from the close working relationship between the French and Syria intelligence agencies in the 1980s (when Diab lived in Lebanon) was connected to his case. (Notably, the French officials clearly state they have no idea where the intelligence came from, in the same way Harkat had no access to original documents or individuals who could be cross-examined).
                  In the same show-trial way Harkat is given “an opportunity to be heard,” we are told Diab should trust the French since he will be provided a similar “opportunity.” But in addition to the secret allegations he faces, the French Courts, as Diab’s team argued,  “cannot properly determine the reliability of the intelligence allegations made against him because they are not allowed to know the sources of the allegations but, rather, presume that all information received from intelligence officers is reliable; the defence cannot effectively probe or question the underlying material in an intelligence report, and intelligence officers are not required to answer when cross-examined; and French courts use intelligence as evidence to prosecute [alleged] terrorists and have admitted torture-derived statements as evidence in the past.” The OCA says since France is a party to the Convention Against Torture, no such thing could occur (even though it does occur with regularity in Canada, also a party to the treaty).

                  While much of the Diab decision deals with the complexities of extradition law and interpretation of this seriously flawed regime, we also are reminded that this is not about law. In making submissions to the Minister of Justice following judicial committal for extradition, the OCA says this stage of the process is “viewed as being largely political in nature…the nature of this decision is clearly not of central importance to the legal system or outside the Minister’s area of expertise,” which is why the Minister must be granted deference by the court.

The Court’s Impermeable Bubble

                  The bubble in which the Ontario Court of Appeal judges live is impermeable. After quoting from a European Court of Human Rights decision deploring the use of torture evidence, the judges smugly state, “Canada shares these values,” adding the Minister should decline to extradite someone where the case they face will include torture-derived evidence. In the spirit of the Suresh exceptional circumstances case of deporting to torture, the OCA says if a “real risk” of torture-derived evidence will be used, the Minister should “generally [not always] refuse to order surrender.” The problem here is that the Department of Justice is the same agency approving the use of torture information here in Canada; why would the Minister think twice about France’s use of such information when it has been so firmly accepted as part of the Canadian discourse?

                   “There may be rare and exceptional circumstances where deportation or surrender to face a substantial risk of torture or a real risk of the use of torture-derived evidence could be justified; generally, however, as we have said, the Minister should refuse to surrender in such circumstances,” the OCA concludes.

                  The rulings in both the Harkat and Diab cases do not bode well for the men, their families, and their communities. The courts have clearly said they are prepared to violate international and domestic legal commitments with respect to torture, and to sacrifice both of these men’s lives for the national security state. The response that such violations demand from the rest of us is a challenge we must commit ourselves to meeting.

                  In the interim, get involved by contacting Justice for Mohamed Harkat (http://www.justiceforharkat.com/ ) and Justice for Hassan Diab (http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org/)

CSIS Still the Cat in the Birdcage

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By Matthew Behrens

                 

                  A few years ago, Canada’s bird lovers came in for some well-deserved looks of bemusement when many wondered why their cute little bunchies and canaries kept disappearing every time a cat was placed inside their birdcages. After all, it was argued, cats were subject to significant and robust oversight mechanisms such as the Feline Activities Review Committee, to ensure the birds would be safe from purring predators.

                  That refusal to recognize the nature of the beast also infects the ongoing discussions within the “national security industrial-academic-media complex” about what to do with the fact that Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), along with its next-door neighbor, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), continue invading the privacy rights of people at home and abroad and violating the law (not to mention committing perjury in front of Federal Court judges and aiding and abetting acts of torture).

                  The latest round of hand-wringing arises from a late 2013 Federal Court decision by judge Richard Mosley. It may be safely assumed that Mosley’s face holds the bull’s eye position on the CSIS Ottawa office’s well-used dartboard, given he is a no-nonsense, hard-working member of the judiciary who, unlike almost all of his weak-kneed colleagues, is not coy when it comes to criticizing the antics of Canada’s scandal-plagued spy agency. His decision, a warrant application by [NAME REDACTED], noted that there “was a breach of duty of candour owed by [CSIS] and their legal advisors to the court,” and that “It is clear that the exercise of the court’s warrant issuing authority has been used as protective cover for activities that it has not authorized.”

CSIS Risks Complicity in Torture

                  In this instance, CSIS was granted permission in 2009 to spy on Canadians abroad, but Mosley discovered that CSIS had, without judicial permission, illegally asked foreign agencies to spy on Canadians overseas, even though, as Mosley noted, this “carries the risk of the detention of or other harm to a Canadian person based on that information. Given the unfortunate history of information sharing with foreign agencies over the past decade and the reviews conducted by several royal commissions, there can be no question that the Canadian agencies are aware of those hazards. It appears to me that they are using the warrants as authorization to assume those risks.”

                  The language is fairly restrained, but in essence, CSIS and its lawyers lied to the court, and “a decision was made by CSIS officials in consultation with their legal advisors to strategically omit information” in Federal Court applications “about their intention to seek the assistance of the foreign partners. As a result, the court was led to believe that all of the interception activity would take place in or under the control of Canada.” Mosley also found that in asking foreign agencies to track Canadians “CSIS and CSEC officials knew…this would involve the breach of international law by the requested second parties.”

                  Mosley sighs that an unspecified number of additional warrants on fresh or renewed applications had been issued by the court and that “in the majority of these cases, if not all, CSIS asked CSEC to task their foreign partners [REDACTED, but clearly in reference to illegal activity.].”

                  Mosley only came to the conclusion something was amiss because he is a voracious reader of various reports and, when he was going over the annual reports of the CSEC Commissioner and the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), he realized that he had been duped. He subsequently called numerous witnesses before him, with one of them, CSEC’s James Abbott, “candidly” admitting that his evidence in support of the original warrant application was “‘crafted’ with legal counsel to exclude any reference” to their plans to use second parties.

                  A special lawyer, Gordon Cameron, was appointed to assist the court, and he concluded that the serious breach by CSIS of the duty of candour to the was exacerbated by the “failure to acknowledge the lack of candour in this proceeding because it demonstrates that [CSIS] does not understand its duty when it comes before this Court ex parte.”

                  In other words, the cat does not understand it should not eat the birds in the cage, even though the Feline Activities Review Committee has repeatedly said such consumption violates the rights of the birds.

Government Lawyer Advice Breaks the Law

                  The Deputy Attorney General of Canada does not fare well in this proceeding either, with Mosley noting that one of Canada’s most powerful legal practitioners essentially argued “that the Court should be kept in the dark about matters it may have reason to be concerned about if it was made aware of them. In the circumstances under consideration that would include matters relating to the prior history of attempts to have the Court authorize the collection of security intelligence abroad and the potential implications of sharing information about Canadian persons with foreign security and intelligence agencies.” Indeed, Cameron also found that the Attorney General’s position seems to be that “CSIS can contract out interceptions of Canadians’ communications or accessing Canadians’ information without any warrant or supervision by this Court."

                  Of course, the world of national security can get blurry sometimes, especially since some parts of the CSIS Act allow spies to break the law. Indeed, Mosley points out, one section allows CSIS to seek special authority “to engage in investigative methods that would otherwise constitute a crime or a breach of the Charter  guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.”

                  Despite this get-out-of-trouble free card, Mosley notes later that “There is nothing in the CSIS Act or in its legislative history, to my knowledge, that suggests that in enacting [the abovementioned exception]  Parliament granted express legislative authority to CSIS to violate international law and the sovereignty of foreign nations either directly or indirectly through the agency of CSEC and the second parties.” Despite this, he notes, “CSIS and CSEC officials knew, based on the legal advice that they had been given … that [tasking other parties to monitor Canadians] would involve the breach of international law by the requested second parties.”

                  The manner in which the Deputy Attorney General and CSIS are interpreting the law, Mosley found, is not consistent with prior Supreme Court decisions and the law itself, and that “CSIS and CSEC officials are relying on that interpretation at their peril and, as cautioned by the CSEC Commissioner and SIRC, incurring the risk that targets may be detained or otherwise harmed as a result of the use of the intercepted communications by the foreign agencies. Section 12 [of the CSIS Act] does not authorize the Service and CSEC to incur that risk or shield them from liability, in my view.”

CSIS: We Never Break the Law

                  While it is good to see that word liability arise in such a decision – and Mosley

firmly stated that CSIS and CSEC cannot justify their activities based on the issuance of special warrants by the Court – there is no guarantee these agencies will comply. Indeed, in its daily boilerplate special, CSIS responded to Mosley by saying everything it does is consistent with “Canadian laws and values,” and while this may be true given the history of Canadian laws and values that have justified the kidnapping, torture, and murder of First Nations children, the rejection of Nazi-era Jewish refugees, the internment of thousands of Japanese heritage, among countless other violations, it does show that even in the small world where individuals like Mosley try to hold CSIS to some kind of lawful standard, it is ultimately impossible to keep them in check. (Notably, CSIS also quietly admitted in a Senate hearing that they would be appealing the decision).

                  Mosley has previously found CSIS witnesses have failed in their duty of candour to the court. Indeed, one Toronto man, Hassan Almrei, faced a decade-long nightmare of solitary confinement and house arrest because a government witness had lied to the court during a secret hearing, while in the Mohmed Harkat secret trial case (still ongoing), another federal court judge found that CSIS’s failure to be honest led to the finding that “it was found to be necessary to repair the damage done to the administration of justice and to re-establish a climate of trust and confidence in this proceeding.”

                  So what is to be done? Some point to the Security Intelligence Review Committee as a model that could be expanded to encompass all of Canada’s national security agencies. Space does not allow reference to the extensive findings of exaggeration, lack of candour, and other CSIS malfeasance that fill the pages of the SIRC’s annual reports. But the body has no enforcement power and, besides, has essentially become an enabler of CSIS. Indeed, as early as 1991, SIRC had settled into its role as a kindly big bother to poor, befuddled CSIS, noting “Those who have followed the progress of CSIS with interest have seen our Annual Reports change from being compendiums of direct and implied criticism, in the early years, to being much more supportive accounts of CSIS’ activities in recent years…. But our criticisms are no longer based upon strong and fundamental disagreements with the CSIS view of the world. [emphasis added] They are far more the results of differences of opinion regarding the  day-to-day implementation of CSIS policies than, as in the past, our opposition to those policies themselves.”

                  By the mid-90s, SIRC noted “It is our responsibility to review CSIS’ activities and then to assure the public that we know what CSIS is doing, that we believe that those activities are necessary, [emphasis added] and that they are being conducted in an appropriate and legal fashion.”  

Useless Oversight in Parliament

                  Wayne Easter, a Liberal MP who once signed secret trial security certificates, feels the solution is his private member’s bill to create a group of National Security Parliamentarians “permanently bound to secrecy” that will, when necessary, hold secret meetings to discuss national security and that, while the appropriate government minister may, if he feels like it, share information with the MPs, he is also entitled by law to “provide none of the information.” So much for oversight, even in a secret body. While the committee would produce an annual report for Parliament, the Prime Minister would be allowed to exclude anything he felt was contrary to national security.

                  Ultimately, the issue is not so much about oversight or review, much as the problem of the disappearing birds could not be solved by the ministrations of the Feline Activities Review Committee. Such discussions divert us from focusing on the nature of the beast: these agencies have historically and continue to play a repressive role that is wholly contemptuous of democracy and, even at a conservative level, the rule of law. From their earliest incarnations, they have targeted as national security threats First Nations and labour organizers, Quebec nationalists, Communists and “Communist-sympathizers”, Canadians of Japanese, German, Italian, Irish, and Ukrainian heritage, Jehovah’s Witnesses and people of Jewish and Muslim faith, the United and Anglican churches, anti-nuclear campaigners and gays and lesbians, and Salvadoran, Kurdish, and Tamil refugees, among countless others. In this context, it is clear who threatens national security in the same way it is clear who threatens the birds when cats are placed in their cages.

                  CSIS, CSEC, the RCMP, the Attorney General, the “Justice” Department, and their brethren will continue to act illegally and laugh behind the backs of judges, as long as all their minions only ever receive is a slap on the wrist from the system: a few harsh words from a court whose decisions are read and digested by few. Until they face time in the dock, they are unlikely to change their ways.

                  Even then, though, the potential for post-crime accountability does little to assist the individual who has already been tortured, whose privacy has been violated, whose job has been taken away, whose family cannot get to sleep at night for fear of that knock on the door.

                  As things stand, despite a lengthy record of criminality and human rights violations, these “national security agencies” continue to enjoy a remarkable degree of respect and deference from the courts, the Parliament, and “oversight” bodies that always assume their “best intentions,” with former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci sadly going so far as to state, in his introduction to a report finding federal government complicity in the torture of three Canadians, that we should be “grateful” to such blood-stained bureaucrats.

                   Perhaps a national referendum on the abolition of agencies that rely on the creation and sustenance of fear is in order. And maybe we could throw in a discussion on seriously overhauling the kind of unequal society that relies so heavily on such repression.

                  Until then, the best efforts of the Richard Mosleys and toiling SIRC lawyers will only produce fine words of outrage about illegal acts by secretive men who, nevertheless, will get up each day, go to work, get promoted, and, regardless of the number of skeletons in the birdcage, carry on as before.

Toronto Torture Tour: March 8

Join the Torture Tour of Toronto, Thursday, March 8, 8:30 am-1:30 pm

Sponsored by Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture and Toronto Action for Social Change

WHAT IS A TORTURE TOUR?

The tour is an opportunity for people to publicly name andprotest at sites of Canadian complicity in torture and other forms of cruel, degrading treatment. These sites include government agencies found by judicial inquiries to be complicit in the torture of Canadian citizens, agencies that regularly deport refugees to torture and other grave fates, Canadian military facilities, and symbols of the ongoing war against women, who experience torture and other forms of alarming violence on a daily basis at the hands of men in Canada. The Torture Tour is yet another step in the years-long campaign of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture seeking accountability, apologies, compensation, and systemic changes to put an end to this country's growing complicity in human rights abuses both here and abroad.

GETTING INVOLVED:
1. To join the torture tour, email tasc@web.ca
2. Bring a bag lunch or snacks for the road. There will NOT be a lot of walking; rather, it will consist of mainly driving between spots and standing vigil for a few minutes at each location.
3. If you drive and can offer spaces to others who need a seat on the torture tour, please let us know.
4. Contributions to help with our expenses are greatly appreciated, and can be made out to Homes not Bombs and mailed to PO Box 2020, 57 Foster Street, Perth, ON K7H 1R0.

BACKGROUND
March will mark 3.5 years since a secretive federal inquiry found the government of Canada complicit in the torture of Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin. Yet the government refuses to accept the findings of its own inquiry, an inquiry in which only its side of the complicity in torture was heard, an inquiry in which none of those who were tortured, nor their lawyers, nor the public, nor the media were allowed to attend. And even with the cards stacked so much in favour of the government, the government was found to be complicit. Now that these three men seek an apology, compensation, and accountability, the government questions the fact that they have been tortured.

REPORT BACK FROM CSI: OTTAWA, ENDING CANADIAN INVOLVEMENT IN TORTURE

(apologies for the belated nature of this report; the issues, however, remain urgent, so see at the bottom what you can do to help)


REPORT BACK FROM CSI: OTTAWA, ENDING CANADIAN INVOLVEMENT IN TORTURE

In the early morning hours of October 26, an Ottawa communiqué was produced by the RCMP’s home-grown Crisis Management Cell (Al Qaeda is not the only disreputable and shady organization that organizes itself with cell structures). The communiqué warned of an impending evolving situation at the Prime Minister’s Office and called on Special Operations as well as Ottawa Police to attend to the scene.

The cause of the crisis, apparently, had to do with “anti-torture” protesters who were set to gather that morning at 9:30 am. While the special bulletin did not explain the whys and wherefores, it would have been obvious to anyone who had been in the city for the previous three days, during which copious amounts of crime scene tape had appeared, accompanied by evidence flags and hooded “detainees,” at a variety of Canadian government agencies and private corporations complicit in torture.

Members of the Crisis Management Cell were also concerned, no doubt, with the banner headline of that morning’s Ottawa Citizen, which revealed that just-released internal RCMP documents indicated that the Mounties knew that the alleged case against Ottawa engineer Abdullah Almalki was completely unfounded. Yet the Mounties nonetheless made up dangerously inflammatory allegations about him that resulted in 22 months of torture in a Syrian dungeon. No one in the institution has been held to account. (for more on those memos see http://rabble.ca/columnists/2011/11/taking-liberties-three-years-after-finding-canadian-complicity-torture-silence-li )

Indeed, October marked three years since the release of a report based on the highly secretive and biased Iacobucci Inquiry, which, despite its major structural faults (the three men at the inquiry’s focus were not allowed to attend the completely secret process), nonetheless found that Canada was complicit in the men’s torture. Despite a subsequent Parliamentary committee’s recommendations, and a vote by the majority of the House of Commons calling for an apology, compensation, and accountability, Prime Minister Harper, as well as the complicit institutions and individuals, have failed to comply with that vote and simply do the right thing.

Hence, public pressure to jump-start a process of accountability to mark that anniversary sprang into action, and for three days, members of Crime Scene Investigation: Ottawa (CSI Ottawa), a fully realized subsidiary of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, had been showing up at dozens of locations, reading aloud damning documents from federal inquiries, court decisions, and independent research that focused both on the cases of three Canadians targeted for torture – Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nereddin – as well as the larger pattern of complicity in torture that has ruined the lives of countless Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and refugees.

DAY ONE: CHURCH RENTS TO RCMP
And so individuals dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, accompanied by others in CSI jackets and one booming sound system, set out to mark the city’s numerous shameful connections to torture. The first day began during the bitterly cold and damp morning rush hour on Monday, October 24 in the city’s east end where, after the group members parked their vehicles in the massive St. Laurent shopping centre parking lot, they headed out on the torture trail leading to the RCMP.

CSI Ottawa: Ending Canadian Involvement in Torture

CSI Ottawa: Ending Canadian Involvement in Torture
October 24-26, 2011

Join us for three days of public witness, vigils, speakouts, and walks throughout Ottawa as we shine a spotlight on Canadian institutions, public and private, that are complicit in the torture of human beings. Details of getting involved are at the bottom of this email.


WHY A CSI-STYLE FORENSIC INVESTIGATION OF TORTURE IN OTTAWA?
Quite simply, because the Government of Canada condones torture, and there are crime scenes throughout the city where evidence of this complicity has been found by courts, judicial inquiries, and other venues. Examples of such institutions include the RCMP, CSIS, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Dept. of Justice, and the War Department. Secrecy has repeatedly been invoked to prevent further evidence of such complicity from entering the public sphere, and those who have made criminal decisions leading to torture have not been charged and held to account.

Clearly, yellow crime scene tape needs to go up all over the city.


WHY NOW?
October 21 will mark three years since a secretive federal inquiry found the government of Canada complicit in the torture of Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin. Yet the government refuses to accept the findings of its own inquiry, an inquiry in which only its side of the complicity in torture was heard, an inquiry in which none of those who were tortured, nor their lawyers, nor the public, nor the media were allowed to attend. And even with the cards stacked so much in favour of the government, the government was found to be complicit. Now that these three men seek an apology, compensation, and accountability, the government questions the fact that they have been tortured.

October will also mark 28 months since a report from the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of the House of Commons called for an immediate apology for all thee men, along with compensation "for the suffering they endured and the difficulties they encountered." The committee released a report that also called on the federal government to "do everything necessary to correct misinformation that may exist in records administered by national security agencies in Canada or abroad with respect to" the three men and their family members.
(full report: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4004074&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2 )

CLEAR DIRECTION NEEDED ON TORTURE
Importantly, the Committee called on "the Government of Canada [to] issue a clear ministerial directive against torture and the use of information obtained from torture for all departments and agencies responsible for national security. The ministerial directive must clearly state that the exchange of information with countries is prohibited when there is a credible risk that it could lead, or contribute, to the use of torture."

On December 3, 2009, that report and its recommendations were endorsed by the majority of the House of Commons. The Harper government refused to act on the will of the majority of the House of Commons.

The rationale behind CSI Ottawa: Ending Canadian Involvement in Torture is to place renewed focus on federal institutions in Ottawa that are complicit in the torture of Canadian citizens, refugees, and immigrants, as well as citizens of countries occupied by Canadian forces. While Canada’s broader complicity in torture will provide an educational backdrop for the week’s events, the specific demands will be:

the federal government's acknowledgement of and implementation of the Standing Committee’s recommendations;
that the Harper government act immediately on the December, 2009 majority vote of the House of Commons endorsing that report;
the full release of all documents related to these cases to the men and their lawyers;
acts of accountability to ensure such actions never again occur.

No More Impunity!

Demand an Apology, Accountability, and Compensation for Three Canadians Targetted for Torture

As Canada Marks the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture June 26, Contact Prime Minister Stephen Harper, "Public Safety" Minister Peter Van Loan to Demand Canada End its Involvement in Torture (contact details below)


IN THIS EMAIL
1. BRIEF SUMMARY
2. BACKGROUND
3. TAKING ACTION


BRIEF SUMMARY
Three Canadians -- Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin -- were tortured overseas with the complicity of their own government. We are calling on the Government of Canada to issue an apology, provide compensation, ensure that all officials responsible are held accountable, take steps to eliminate false information about these men and their families from Canadian and international databases, and demand that the federal government issue a clear ministerial directive against torture and the use of information obtained from torture.

BACKGROUND
Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin are Canadian citizens who were targetted for torture by agencies of their own government.

All were falsely labelled as alleged threats to Canada's "national security," and all wound up in Syrian torture chambers (and, in one case, Egyptian torture chambers as well) where they were interrogated and tortured based on questions that came from Canada. A problematic secret federal review of their cases (The Iacobucci Inquiry, which unfortunately excluded the men, their lawyers, the press, and public from participating) nonetheless found that Canadian agencies were complicit in the men's overseas detention, interrogation, and torture.

Last week the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of the House of Commons called for an immediate apology for all thee men, along with compensation "for the suffering they endured and the difficulties they encountered." The committee released a report that also called on the federal government to "do everything necessary to correct misinformation that may exist in records administered by national security agencies in Canada or abroad with respect to" the three men and their family members.
(full report: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4004074&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2 )

CLEAR DIRECTION NEEDED ON TORTURE
Importantly, the Committee called on "the Government of Canada issue a clear ministerial directive against torture and the use of information obtained from torture for all departments and agencies responsible for national security. The ministerial directive must clearly state that the exchange of information with countries is prohibited when there is a credible risk that it could lead, or contribute, to the use of torture."

Unfortunately, the committee did not go far enough in demanding actions that could end the culture of impunity that continues to thrive with respect to torture in the highest levels of the Canadian government, from CSIS and the RCMP to the Justice Dept. and Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Indeed, names were named in both the O'Connor Inquiry (which examined the case of Maher Arar) and the Iacobucci inquiry, and it is clear in both reports that the actions of Canadian officials led to the torture of Canadian citizens abroad.

Yet there has been a disturbing silence on the issue of holding officials accountable. In fact, with one exception, it appears that all officials who appear to have been complicit either directly or indirectly in that overseas detention, interrogation, and torture, have received promotions.

CULTURE OF IMPUNITY IN OTTAWA
Perhaps the most high-profile of those Canadian officials is Michel Cabana, who ran Project AO-Canada (the investigation that was found to have been based on false information that led to the overseas detention, interrogation, and torture of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, and Ahmad El Maati). Remarkably, Cabana is now the Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP, one heartbeat away from the top job in a national police force that has been implicated in torture.

We have serious questions about the suitability of Mr. Cabana to hold such a high position in an organization that is supposed to be cleaning up its act and ending its complicity in torture.

With the recent court orders to repatriate yet two other Canadians tortured with the complicity of their own government (Omar Khadr and Abousfian Abdelrazik), we need to ask: how many more cases of torture-by-proxy exist, and how many more will continue to occur unless there are major systemic changes in the way things are run in Ottawa?

While we work towards those systemic changes, we join the call from the Parliamentary committee "to immediately implement all the recommendations from these inquiries, as the failure to do so could result in further serious violations of the rights of Canadians."

While the committee calls for an oversight committee of all agencies involved in "national security" investigations, we remain concerned that such a committee can only review human rights disasters AFTER they have occurred. Rather, we need pre-emptive action to stop torture-complicit spies from doing further damage to folks in this country and abroad.

TAKE STEPS FOR JUSTICE NOW!
The Federal government will state that such recommendations cannot be agreed to because civil suits are in progress, yet Maher Arar received an apology before his case was heard in court. The Committee also disagrees with this position, declaring "The majority of the Committee does not agree with the government’s position that issuing apologies can influence the course of civil actions. The majority is of the opinion that the government must officially recognize the harm caused to these Canadians." Indeed, the government could end the civil suit process immediately by fairly addressing the damage that has been inflicted on the men and their families.

While there remain many other tangled webs of Canadian involvement in torture (the case of rendition survivor Benamar Benatta, who still seeks a public review of his case, the ongoing secret rendition-to-torture hearings taking place in the Federal Courts under the name of "security certificates," Canada's involvement in the U.S.-based School of the Assassins, complicity in the torture of people in Afghanistan, among many others), we have an opportunity to take immediate steps to ensure a small measure of justice for Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

TAKING ACTION
1. Please write a polite, simple letter to Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, copying Stephen Harper and your MP, calling on them to immediately apologize for and provide compensation for Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, as recommended by the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Please add in as well that you feel officials involved in facilitating their torture need to be held accountable, and that systemic changes are required to permanently end further Canadian involvement in torture. Remind them that the committee also calls on " the Government of Canada issue a clear ministerial directive against torture and the use of information obtained from torture." Please remind them as well that false information about these three men and their families exists in government databases around the world and here in Canada, and every effort must be made to erase those lies.

Personalize the letter if you can.

Peter Van Loan
Telephone: (613) 996-7752
Fax: (613) 992-8351
E-mail: vanloan.p@parl.gc.ca

Stephen Harper
Telephone: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900
Email: HarpeS@parl.gc.ca

Contact details of MPs via www.parl.gc.ca (click on "Members of Parliament (Current)")

*******

More information:
Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture:
http://homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/search/label/end%20torture
PO Box 73620, 509 St. CXlair Ave. West, Toronto, ON M6C 1C0, tasc@web.ca

More details on the men and their cases, plus video interviews: http://sites.google.com/site/endtorturenow/

Committee report: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4004074&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2