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.

  

Ramadan Solidarity Fast With Benamar Benatta

An appeal from Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture (please share and distribute widely)

Friends,

As Ramadan is set to begin on July 20, we invite you to consider signing a public declaration in support of Benamar Benatta, Canada's first post-9/11 rendition to torture (September 12, 2001). While you can read more on Benamar's case at www.benamarbenatta.com, in essence. Mr. Benatta spent five years behind bars in the United States, often under conditions amounting to torture, simply because the Canadian government falsely labelled him a threat to national security and turned him over to the U.S. as a 9/11 suspect.

As Mr. Benatta continues his often lonely struggle for justice (a struggle mirrored in many cases across Canada and the rest of the globe), we invite you to consider joining a solidarity fast with Mr. Benatta and all others seeking accountability for the crimes committed by the Canadian and related governments.

We invite those of the Muslim faith to sign their names to the document below as a statement of solidarity with fellow Muslim Benamar Benatta. We also invite those who are not necessarily Muslim to join in a solidarity Ramadan fast in support of Mr. Benatta as well as all those who continue to be unjustly, and illegally, targetted for persecution, torture, and exile in the name of "security." (If you can only fast for certain periods, please indicate that in signing the statement, i.e, fasting for this week, these days, etc.)

The statement will be publicly announced, with names affixed, on July 19, 2012. Please send your name as a signatory to tasc@web.ca



A FAST OF SOLIDARITY
A central tenet of the Muslim faith is the idea that one is called upon to assist those less fortunate than oneself. That expression of solidarity with the poor, the persecuted, the disadvantaged, takes on added meaning during the month-long fast of Ramadan. It is during this time when Muslims, in order to feel both closer to God and to better feel empathy for those they are called to assist the rest of the year, experience the self-restraint of a sun-up to sun-down fast every day, for a month.

Muslim detainees fill the jails of the world, persecuted on the basis of their faith. Many people of Arabic, Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage and Muslim faith find themselves in U.S., U.K., and Canadian jails, often without charge or bail, on secret allegations neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see.

In addition, survivors of torture in which those governments are clearly complicit continue seeking accountability, apologies, and compensation for the decisions of governments that have led to their torture.

This year, we join with the call from Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture to join a solidarity fast with Benamar Benatta, a refugee from Algeria who was rendered to torture by Canada to the U.S. on September 12, 2001. Mr. Benatta was subjected to torture in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York (as documented by the United Nations and the U.S. Department of Justice) and lost five years of his life behind bars, despite the fact the FBI knew in November, 2001, that there was nothing against him.

Mr. Benatta had been racially and religiously "profiled" by the Canadian government, falsely naming him a 9/11 suspect before turning him over to the Americans, with entirely predictable consequences.

On July 20, 2006, Mr. Benatta was finally released from prison and allowed back into Canada, still wearing his prison uniform, to continue with his refugee case and to try and piece his shattered life back together.

July 20, 2012, the 6th anniversary of Benatta's return to Canada, is the start of Ramadan. As Mr. Benatta struggles to find work in his field of aeronautical engineering and continues to fight the demons of post traumatic stress disorder, he seeks an apology from a Canadian government whose own internal documents admit they are legally culpable for the decision that led to his illegal deportation and torture.

Mr. Benatta is not alone seeking such justice: numerous others who were racially and religiously profiled by Canadian "security" agencies continue their struggle for accountability as well.

During this month of Ramadan, 2012, (July 20-August 18), we the undersigned will join in sun-up to sun-down fasting in solidarity with Mr. Benatta and all those continuing to seek justice from governments that have made the conscious choice to make expendable the lives of those they illegally, and immorally, deem "suspect," and thereby condemn to the most unimaginable cruelty.

NAME, CITY



WHAT YOU CAN DO IN ADDITION TO FASTING
1. Write a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (Toews.V@parl.gc.ca) and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca) calling for an apology and compensation for Mr. Benatta.
2. Contribute to the costs of Benamar's struggle. Cheques can be made out to Toronto Action for Social Change  (put "Benatta" in the memo portion of the cheque) and mailed to TASC, PO Box 2121, 57 Foster Street Perth, ON, K7H 1R0.
3. Offer Benamar Benatta a job if you are in the Greater Toronto Area.

More info: Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, (613) 267-3998, tasc@web.ca

UN Report Documents Canadian Complicity in Torture

UN Report Documents Canadian Complicity in Torture

By Matthew Behrens

            As the world marked the International Day Against Torture on June 26, official pronouncements from Canada were blaringly silent. Perhaps that failure to mark one of the more important days of the calendar speaks volumes about the government’s ongoing involvement in torture, an uncomfortable reality that most Canadians are unaware of, even with the filing earlier in the month of a stinging United Nations report laying out in fine detail Canada’s complicity.

            The report from the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) came on the heels of another UN report from the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, who not only expressed concern about the growing inequality gap in this country, but also took Canada to task for what he called its “appallingly poor” record of respecting and implementing the recommendations of UN human rights organizations.

            De Schutter told Postmedia that “this sort of self-righteousness about the situation being good in Canada is not corresponding to what I saw on the ground, not at all.” His blunt statements, while drawing ire from the Harper government, also reflect the government’s record on the issue of torture.

            The CAT report points out that Canada has yet to make good on recommendations made in successive reports over the past decade that have called on this country to bring itself in line with its international law and treaty obligations. While Conservative MPs loudly protested that the UN had no right to be making such pronouncements (despite the fact that a key part of UN membership includes submitting to such reviews), the findings ultimately fell victim to the vagaries of the 24-hour news cycle.

            While relatively short, the report nonetheless provides a very good summary of key human rights issues affecting all people in Canada.            The CAT made special note of the fact that Canada has yet to implement the Convention Against Torture “in full at the domestic level”, noting that implementation is essential since “it would allow people to invoke it directly in courts…as well as to raise awareness of its provisions among the judiciary and the public at large.”

            The report is certainly not comprehensive (among those absent from it were numerous individuals seeking justice, apologies, and compensation for Canadian complicity in their torture, from Abousfian Abdelrazik – tortured in Sudan, prevented from returning home, and subject to a wholly unwarranted assets freeze –  to Benamar Benatta, rendered to torture in the US on September 12, 2011). Nonetheless, it remains a disturbing laundry list of what are clearly legal violations with serious human consequences, including within it a reminder that Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin, all tortured with Canadian complicity, have yet to receive an apology, compensation, and the systemic changes needed to ensure such acts never again take place.

            For instance, Canada was hauled on the carpet for its ongoing refusal to close the door on deportation to torture. While the government insists that its “right” to conduct such deportations is merely “theoretical,” there have been numerous documented cases of individuals showing up in prison, tortured, or murdered following their forced removal from Canada. The CAT also expressed its concern that Canada does not respect the UN’s conclusions when individuals apply to the international body for “interim measures of protection,” which would put on hold such deportations until the UN could hear in full the case at hand. The fact that Canada has ratified the Convention and thereby undertook to cooperate with the Committee is not reflected in reality, and “by deporting complainants despite the Committee’s requests for interim measures…[Canada] has committed a breach of its obligations.”

            And as seriously repressive immigration legislation has been passed, it appears those supporting the new bills failed to heed the CAT’s critique with respect to restrictions on the rights of refugees. Indeed, mandatory one-year detention without bail for individuals who arrive via an “irregular” fashion (as if refugees often have a choice of travel), along with the Immigration Minister’s discretion to designate certain countries as “safe” seriously limits the rights of whole classes of asylum seekers.

            Perhaps the most draconian of immigration measures in Canada, the secret trial security certificate process, continued to be a target of the CAT as well, especially federal efforts to rely on “diplomatic assurances” from torturing countries that torture would not be inflicted on deportees from Canada.

            While two of the five Muslim men subject to the process have had their cases thrown out – both Hassan Almrei and Adil Charkoaui have since launched lawsuits against the federal government – three cases remain, with Ottawa’s Mohamed Harkat now appealing to have his case heard at the Supreme Court in order to end his decade-long struggle to stop deportation to torture in Algeria. In Toronto, Mohammad Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah, both facing judicially-sanctioned rendition to Egypt, continue to face the excruciatingly long process before the Federal Court.

            In the Mahjoub case, significantly, it came to light in December of last year that CSIS knew  most of his case was derived from information obtained by torture. Remarkably, that revelation did not put a stop to the proceedings, nor have ongoing revelations that CSIS refuses to discard information gleaned from torture. (Notably, the Committee did err in stating that Almrei’s case was based on torture). The CAT reiterated the findings of similar UN reports calling on Ottawa to use criminal law proceedings and safeguards in such cases, recommendations that remain ignored.

            Objective readers of the report might find it surprising that in the 21^st century, a country such as Canada needs to be reminded, for example, never to transfer prisoners from military operations to another country where there are substantial grounds for believing the detainee would be subjected to torture.

            Among other significant findings of the CAT were Canada’s failure to exercise universal jurisdiction when it comes to apprehending those alleged to have perpetrated war crimes (readers may recall the ease with which former President George W. Bush waltzes into and out of Canada, despite legal objections filed with the Dept. of Justice). They also issue a call to repatriate Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, especially given the acknowledgement by the Supreme Court of Canada that his rights had been violated by Canadian officials while at the notorious detention and torture centre. The CAT also criticized Canada for continuing to honour state immunity, preventing victims of torture from suing overseas governments.

            Importantly, the committee also took note of a number of areas not commonly associated in most people’s minds with torture: the treatment of the mentally ill in Canadian prisons, the continued use of extended periods of solitary confinement, and police use of lethal conducted energy weapons.

            And while the Canadian government argued another issue should not even be discussed, the CAT disagreed, pointing out that  Aboriginal women continue to face “disproportionately high levels of life-threatening forms of violence, spousal homicides and enforced disappearances.

            In a theme that seems to run through much of the Harper government’s conduct, mention was also made of the government’s failure to fully cooperate with the committee by submitting its replies to questions three months late. Such delay and obstruction is typical of Canadian government responses to such inquiries, and has more recently formed the backdrop to a number of military investigations. Indeed, while the family of the late soldier Stuart Langridge continues seeking answers from a stonewalling military that refuses to divulge key documents regarding the suicide of the Afghanistan war veteran, the Military Police Complaints Commission released a late June report on Canadian transfers of Afghan detainees to torture also criticized the government for its refusal to cooperate. When it came to the federal government providing information to the commission, the report concluded, “the doors were basically slammed shut on document disclosure.”

            Their refusal to allow full disclosure about torture and related issues shows the extent to which the government is ultimately afraid of democratic processes and exposure of its own seedy practices. It’s also a sign of how much governments fear popular resistance and understand that an informed public is one that is likely to resist such policies and seek substantive change.

            Among those who will be doing just that come October will be members of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, currently organizing a national day of speakouts and town square readings of documents such as the UN report and other findings about Canadian complicity in torture.

            In addition, a Ramadan solidarity fast with Benamar Benatta, still seeking an apology a decade after he was rendered to the US, will also be taking place.

REFUSING A CULTURE OF AMNESIA: REPORT FROM THE TOUR TO END CANADIAN INVOLVEMENT TORTURE

Like most governments complicit in torture, Canada’s rulers, spy agencies, and federal lawyers promote a culture of enforced forgetfulness. Even though two judicial inquiries, numerous Federal and Supreme Court rulings, and scads of human rights reports confirm Canadian complicity in torture, the party line is to spout “there may have been one or two aberrations, but, as Obama preaches stateside, it’s best to look forward and forget about the past.”

As Judith Herman eloquently states in her landmark study Trauma and Recovery, “In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of the victim…After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”

As part of its ongoing efforts to counter the silencing and attempts to discredit those tortured with Canadian complicity, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture organized on March 8 a Torture Tour of Toronto, publicly naming sites of governmental and corporate complicity in torture in the city’s northwest end. Over 50 people, about a third of them high school students, made a collective statement that no amount of coercive amnesia can erase the traumatic experiences still lived by numerous survivors of Canadian involvement in torture. Their names include Abousfian Abdelrazik, Abdullah Almalki, Benamar Benatta, Adel Benhmuda, Maher Arar, Ahmad El Maati, Mourad Ikhlef, Omar Khadr, Muayyed Nureddin, Sogi Singh, Ivan Apaolaza Sancho, among many others.

The Torture Tour began shortly after the release of a series of formerly classified government documents that clearly showed that the Canadian government and numerous of its agencies, including CSIS, continue as a normal practice to trade in the torture of human beings. These included the frank CSIS admission that the secret hearing security certificate proceedings are built almost wholly on torture as well as two directives from “Public Safety” Minister Vic Toews instructing CSIS to continue using information gleaned from torture and sharing information even if there is a substantial likelihood that would lead to torture.

(Notably for those who mistakenly believe that blood is only on the hands of Harper’s gang, two days after the tour was complete, a new memo surfaced courtesy of Wikileaks that illustrated the extent to which the Liberal government of Paul Martin, Bill Graham et al. worked furiously behind the scenes with the U.S. to ensure any findings and recommendations arising from the inquiry into Maher Arar’s torture would not impede the ongoing “intelligence sharing” that led to the torture of Mr. Arar. The memo, written by then U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, praised then “Public Safety” Minister Anne McLellan for her participation in what the U.S. was requiring of its northern ally to deflect from the focus on Canadian complicity in torture: “an aggressive public diplomacy campaign” hyping alleged terror threats.

THE TOUR

Despite fierce gales and rain, the tour got off to a start at the office of Conservative MP Bal Gosal. Following an acknowledgement that Canada’s first rendition program targeted First Nations children – the kidnapping and forced captivity, accompanied by brutal physical and emotional abuse, of countless thousands of children – speakers provided an overview of the Harper government’s current complicity.

Gosal’s office manager politely listened to the concerns of the demonstrators who walked into his office. But it was strange, however, to be talking about judicial inquiries, court decisions, and declassified documents pointing out Canadian complicity in torture, and to have the office manager nod and smile slightly, behaving as if he were listening to someone recite items on a grocery list, not the horrors they were discussing.

“Are you not concerned, perhaps shocked, that your government is involved in these crimes?” the group asked.

He never answered the question. A petition was presented, calling on the government to respect the 2009 vote of a majority of the House of Commons demanding an apology, compensation, and systemic changes with respect to the torture of Mssrs. Almalki, El Maati, and Nureddin. The manager promised to pass along petitions and inform the group when they would be tabled in the House; two weeks later, we have heard nothing.

THE DAILY TORTURE OF WOMEN

From there, the group headed down to the Airport Strip Lounge, a closed “entertainment” centre to focus on crimes of violence against women. The group chose to go there when it was empty so as not to be seen to be condemning women who work there. They also chose the spot given the club’s website, which advertises itself as a place of “nothing but elegance, superiority, equality and respect” for women. Teacher and social justice organizer Jozef Konyari called these “a few strategic words used to mask the social and economic realities of a society still learning how to be fair, equal and just, not only in theory, but more importantly, in practice.

Some felt the symbol was inappropriate, and Tracey Tief spoke to the larger web of violence against women as exemplified by a brutal economic regime that blocks women’s access and participation at all levels, noting that one could easily show that the act of buying flowers for a loved one is equally symbolic of violence against women if one followed the production chain back the starvation wages of women harvesting those flowers in a pesticide-ridden African greenhouse.

Konyari read out a powerful reflection on the war against women which, he said, remains largely hidden and silent. He quoted from Brian Vallee’s book The War Against Women, noting: “In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and policemen were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women – nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate”

Konyari also pointed out that according to the United Nations Convention against Torture, Cruel and Inhumane Treatment, “torture consists of ANY act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is inflicted on a person,” adding “this describes the treatment of countless women within the GTA area and beyond.” He recalled the stories of two of the hundreds of Toronto targets of such violence, and then asked the question posed by Rhonda Copelon: “How are these stories, which take place within our homes and communities, less damaging than violence of official prisons and interrogation ‘booths’? The tortures authorized by U.S. officials against male detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, including methods of sexualized humiliation and fear-induction, bear strong resemblance to what is tolerated as ‘domestic’ violence”

“Does the government of Canada inflict severe pain or suffering when it chooses to increase military spending by 54% (22.3 billion 2010 - 2011) since 9/11 – an increase that makes Canada the 13^th largest military spender in the world – instead of choosing to properly fund Canada’s 593 women’s shelters? Does the government of Canada inflict severe pain or suffering when it fails to provide services for the over 100,000 women and children that seek safety in shelters each year?”

CANADA’S TORTURE TAXI

The group proceeded to protest across the street from the hangar for Skyservice Business Aviation, the Canadian Torture Taxi that not only awaits word from Ottawa when it can deport to torture secret trial detainees bound for dungeons in Egypt and Algeria, but has also increased its regular deportation business to a range of other human rights abusing countries such as Somalia.

The tour continued to the place that rounds up the human materiel for deportations, the Canadian Border Services Agency. Group members read out a statement condemning the agency’s role in the detention and deportation of tens of thousands of women, children and men who come to Canada seeking safety but who are rejected by an unfair system that still fails to grant a proper appeal. They noted the trauma that is experienced by the thousands arbitrarily detained without charge by CBSA, and the shackling of detainees who require medical attention, including pregnant women.

While some spoke with the refugee claimants who have to make the long trek to this faraway office from all parts of the Greater Toronto Area for weekly check-ins, others were confronted by an angry parking lot representative who objected to the crime scene tape that had sprung up around the entrance to the building, and insisted organizers take it down. When he was informed that this was a crime scene and that we could not take it down, he said he could not do it—was he afraid to interfere with a legal naming of this place?

CORPORATE CONNECTIONS

The group headed to SNC-Lavalin, which had been busy last year building a prison for the torturing Gaddafi regime that, it laughably claimed, would be built to international human rights standards. In any event, the group stated, no prison can respect human rights since prisons as a concept are anti-human, and the replacement crew for Gaddafi, likely to inherit the prison, has been implicated in torture and extrajudicial executions as well. We also noted that SNC had been the focus of a campaign to divest itself of a factory in Quebec that pumped out almost 700 million bullets a year for the U.S. military, a campaign that ultimately proved successful.

This message was repeated at Metro West Detention Centre, where the group discussed dismissing the notion of good guys and bad guys, and the perverse idea that this is where “bad people” end up. We have bad institutions, not bad people, and the people who create inhuman conditions never end up here: places like this only continue the spiral of violence. The group also recalled that this is where secret trial detainees Hassan Almrei, Mahmoud Jaballah, and Mohammad Mahjoub had spent years suffering in solitary confinement without charge or bail based on information gleaned from torture. Almrei spent four and a half years in one solitary cell, without heat for the first two winters, and all the men endured lengthy hunger strikes as long as 80 days in an effort to slightly improve conditions.

Metro West guards were unnerved and, when they saw Crime Scene tape on their front sign, called the police with a complaint of property damage,. About 20 minutes later, 9 squads cars showed up, some stopping in the middle of the street and accosting young high school students taking part in the tour.

Meanwhile, the group stood vigil at Caterpillar, where grandmother Beth Guthrie, a longtime social justice activist, talked about the corporation’s role in the repression of Palestinians. Just as General Motors is slated soon to pay symbolic reparations to the victims of apartheid South Africa who were brutalized by officials using GM vehicles, so Caterpillar may one day face a court hearing for similar crimes.

“Most of us enjoy watching those great big Caterpillar construction machines,” Guthrie said. “When my sons were little I used to take them to construction sites where they could watch them dig holes and break things. Then they went home to the sandbox to play with their toy versions of the same machine. In our town the bulldozers and diggers seemed to be employed in building things and making a better world.

THE TORTURE OF OCCUPATION

“Then in March 2003 Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer. She was a young American peace activist trying to stop it from destroying the home of a Palestinian family in Gaza and it deliberately drove right over her. I had just begun learning about what was happening in Palestine and one of my friends knew Rachel, so it felt very close to me.”

The United States buys the bulldozers from CAT and then sells them to the Israeli army through the Israel Tractor Equipment (ETI) company. The bulldozers are subsequently militarized by Inrob Tech, an American company based in Israel. …. In addition to destroying land and homes, CAT equipment is also used to kill civilians who do not have time to evacuate their homes, since the demolition is often done at night and without advance notice. The Israeli army has, in fact, pursued the destruction of homes while being fully aware that some residents were still inside.

Since 1967, CAT bulldozers have destroyed more than 12,000 homes and businesses in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, affecting more than 50, 000 Palestinian who were left homeless. Of these, more than 3,000 homes have been destroyed since 2003, evidence of the intensification of the destruction during the last decade.

“All this means that I urge you to boycott Caterpillar equipment, even if it just means not buying your kid that toy bulldozer or renting that lawn tractor,” she concluded. “Israel is using Caterpillar equipment to help it to take over Palestinian land. By selling equipment to the Israeli Forces, the Caterpillar corporation is directly involved in serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law perpetrated by Israel. The importance of these bulldozers in Israel’s military strategy is crucial. The commander of the Israeli army qualified Caterpillar equipment as ‘key weapons’ in maintaining the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

The group then headed to the RCMP. As the nine squad cars lined up and officers lined up, tour members realized there were far too many RCMP crimes to be list6ed, and so decided to go directly into the building and confront those inside. We’d been here before, demanding answers, but were given none. Perhaps this time it would be different?

As about 25 people crowded into the small lobby, two Mounties on their way out were caught in the middle, and had to listen to an explanation of the crimes of the RCMP as docu9mented by the O’Connor and Iacobucci judicial inquiries. The agents were questioned intensely about their responsibility and how they felt about the inquiries. How did they feel belonging to an organization implicated in torture? What would they do if they knew information they were gathering would result in someone being tortured?

As at the MP’s office, the glazed eye response was prominent. We were repeatedly told “no comment” when we asked questions. Could they find someone who would comment? They went inside to speak to a supervisor, but came out with the same response—there action had blood on its hands.

“If you were asked to follow someone based on nothing more than racial or religious profiling, which happened in all of these cases, would you refuse to do so?” we asked.

“I can’t comment on hypothetical situations,” came a reply.

“This isn’t a hypothetical, this is a daily occurrence, and your organization does this.”

“NO comment.”

The officers were given our contact information in the event they would like to become a whistleblower. We promised we would support anyone who had the courage to come forward with further evidence of malfeasance or secret files that have so far been denied to the men tortured with their complicity.

“You have a right to exercise your conscience and a responsibility to follow the law,” they were told as we left.

AFGHANISTAN

Given a shortage of time, the group had to skip two locations. One was L-3 Communications, the site which produced cruise missile guidance systems in the 1980s as well as other criminal weapons systems used against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose subsidiary, L-3 Titan, is implicated in torture. The other location was Tim Horton’s, where the group planned to read the eloquent testimony of cultural and language advisor Ahmadshah Malgarai, who testified at the House of Commons about the fact that high level officials in Canada’s War Dept. knew that detainees transferred out of Canadian hands would be tortured, and who said Canadian Warlord Rick Hillier had lied to the committee. Read his full testimony at http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=4426965&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=3

Throughout the tour, the group had discussed the human rights abuses inherent in new anti-refugee legislation proposed by Jason Kenney, Canada’s Deportation Minister. The final stop on the journey was a perfect place to reflect on what the new law will mean: more jail, more deportation, more misery, more complicity in torture. The refugee jail on Rexdale Blvd. is in fact expanding, an ominous sign of what’s to come.

THE REFUGEE JAIL

It is here that thousands of people are passed throughout the year, all detained without charge for indefinite periods of time, all frightened, despairing, hopeless. The energized response of those inside the jail, who waved frantically from their barred windows at the gathered crowd, some desperately trying to send messages to us on small bits of paper, was testimony to the desperation felt inside. Two rounds of barbed wire fence surrounded a small outdoor area where the children who are in the jail are sometimes, allegedly, allowed to go.

The crowd waved back to those inside and pledged solidarity and work towards ending the crime of refugee detention. They sang songs, formed human peace symbols, and called out to recognize the humanity of those who have been retraumatized with their detention.

A posse of private security kept close watch, and as the group made their way to the jail parking lot to express solidarity with those on the west side of the jail, the security manager threatened to start making arrests unless people moved.

“Are you telling us that we cannot be human and share a human moment with people inside the jail?” asked one participant.

The answer was no.

As the group packed up its banners and placards, it committed itself to further actions not only in the cases of torture survivors still seeking justice, but all those currently affected by repressive Canadian polices and the new legislation that will further add to Canada’s record of human rights abuses.

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.

Canada’s Secret Trial Cases Built on Torture

(this story originally appeared at rabble.ca)

By Matthew Behrens

Four years after the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously found them unconstitutional, secret hearing “security certificates” are still in use, with a number of Muslim men fighting unseen allegations while under threat of deportation to torture.

Security certificates have long been used by Canada’s scandal-plagued spy agency CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) to tar refugees and permanent residents as national security threats without having to explain their alleged case. Those detained under the process are never charged, and subjected to lower standards than those applying to any citizen facing similar accusations. Indeed, the law governing the procedure allows for the introduction of any piece of information “even if it is inadmissible in a court of law.”

For the past decade, five Muslim men – dubbed the Secret Trial Five – have endured this Kafkaesque process both behind bars and under humiliating house arrest. Last month, the release of two formerly classified documents indicates that the national security secrecy claims that form the bedrock of these cases have in fact served as a cover for illegal and unethical acts by CSIS.

Indeed, the documents reveal the secret trial regime relies almost entirely on information gleaned from torture. A 2008 letter written by Jim Judd, then head of CSIS, bemoans legislative changes then being proposed that, in raising the bar on the admissibility of information possibly extracted under torture, “could render unsustainable the current security certificate proceedings.”

The CSIS memo does not comment on the ethics or legality of using information gleaned from torture; rather, it speaks to whether or not that information can somehow be corroborated. Judd claims that CSIS must maintain relations with countries that have poor human rights records as part of its so-called counter-terrorism efforts, and he shudders that with a proposed amendment on torture, “a Court could require CSIS to certify that all intelligence gathered in support of Certificates was done without resort to torture. This would almost certainly result in the Security Certificates regime falling into disuse as a consequence of its unworkability.”

Judd adds that a Court could render inadmissible “any and all information provided by agencies in countries whose human rights records are in question – of which there are many.” This scenario could arise, the memo continues, because “much” of the information put forward by CSIS in these cases “corroborates, or is corroborated, by [words blacked out, but clearly implying derived from torture], which under this interpretation of the amendment may no longer be admissible.”

RCMP's Own Docs Reveal Case Against Almalki Racist, Unfounded

Three Years After Finding of Canadian Complicity in Torture, Silence Lingers in Ottawa.

By Matthew Behrens

(this story originally appeared at rabble.ca)

Three years after a secretive federal inquiry found that numerous agencies of the Canadian government were complicit in his torture, Ottawa’s Abdullah Almalki held a press conference on Parliament Hill October 25, where he released shocking documents to prove the alleged case against him was completely unfounded and based on racism.

Almalki, who was detained, interrogated, and tortured for 22 months in a Syrian dungeon, has sought answers to many questions since his return to Canada. Why was he targeted? How could agencies of his own government fabricate a case against him and then send questions to his Syrian torturers? He had hoped to participate in the Iacobucci Inquiry struck in 2007 to investigate both his case and those of Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, also tortured with Canadian complicity, but all three were completely shut out of the process, along with their lawyers, the public, and the media.

The Iacobucci report, released in October 2008, found, among other conclusions, that “several of the Canadian officials involved in the decision to send questions for Mr. Almalki were aware that doing so created a serious risk that Mr. Almalki would be tortured.” It also found “Some of the RCMP members involved in the decision to send questions for Mr. Almalki displayed a dismissive attitude towards the issue of human rights and the possibility of torture.”

The report cleared the three men of the serious allegations that had been created about them by CSIS and the RCMP, noting that in the case of Mr. Almalki, a description of him as an “imminent threat” to national security was not only “inflammatory, inaccurate, and lacking investigative foundation,” it was in fact meant to describe someone else.

But the damning findings of the Iacobucci inquiry did not provide a sufficient enough explanation both for what happened and why it occurred, and certainly failed to lay proper blame and seek accountability.

Since that time, Almalki has sifted through many pages of documents he received under freedom of access to information, and was shocked to discover what he found.

“Ten years ago, I never thought that one day I would be standing and speaking publicly about racism,” Almalki says. “I think I had the grace of not experiencing racism in my life before.”

The occasion for his comments was the October 25 release of RCMP internal documents from 2001. About three weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the RCMP sent a dangerous, inflammatory memo to Syria and the intelligence agencies of numerous other countries suggesting Almalki was an “imminent threat” to the public safety and security of Canada. Yet that same day, the RCMP’s own assessment showed he was not a threat at all. “O Div. task force are presently finding it difficult to establish anything on him other than the fact that he is an arab running around,” the document reads.

“It is not only heartbreaking and extremely disappointing to see that the biggest police force in Canada is racist,” Almalki says. “It is rather disgusting and outrageous when you see that this would lead to making up and fabricating accusations about a person that resulted in torture and illegal detention.

“Racism blinds people, impairs their judgment, shrinks their cognitive abilities, and diminishes moral values. Racism stinks and stings.”

Taking Liberties: The Ever-Changing Imperatives of "National Security"

(This is the first in a series of columns at rabble.ca on “national security” and civil liberties in Canada and abroad that seeks to focus on specific cases as well as the overall framework in which serious human rights abuses have been justified in the name of security.)

By Matthew Behrens

Just after Thanksgiving, Montreal’s Westin Hotel played host to a gathering of high-powered Federal Court judges, NGO heads, lawyers, academics, and members of Canada’s torture-complicit spy service, CSIS. Coming together under the predictably dry title “Terrorism, Law and Democracy: 10 years after 9/11,” the conference sought to determine “whether Canadian law has successfully preserved fundamental rights and values of substantive and procedural justice while at the same time contributing to anti-terrorism.”

This collegial-sounding gathering – entrance to which was restricted to those who could shell out the $895 entrance fee – appears to have been one of those periodic gabfests where elite representatives determine the responsible manner in which the rest of us will perceive terms like “terrorism” and “national security”. Importantly, attendees were safely insulated from the most compelling voices of the past ten years: those who have been victimized by numerous conference participants. The latter included judges who have presided over secret hearings, spies whose organization falsely labels individuals security threats, and academics who produce papers defending arbitrary detention.

Indeed, Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin, who three years ago this month were found by a secretive federal inquiry to have been tortured with the complicity of Canadian government agencies, including CSIS, were not on any of the panels. Nor were Abousfian Abdelrazik and Omar Khadr, both tortured with CSIS complicity. Benamar Benatta, an Algerian refugee rendered to torture by Canadian hands on September 12, 2001, wasn’t there to talk about how his Charter rights had been violated either, nor were Adil Charkaoui and Hassan Almrei, whose bogus secret trial security certificates were finally quashed after a decade-long struggle. Mohammad Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah, and Mohamed Harkat, who are still facing deportation to torture without being able to see the secret “case” against them, were similarly absent.

Each of those individuals was more than capable of delivering an eloquent assessment of the conference theme – indeed, the names and stories of those who have suffered a fundamental denial of rights at the hands of Canadian authorities in the past decade could fill volumes. But conference organizers instead brought in CSIS Assistant Director of Intelligence Raymond Boisvert, and former CSIS Director Jim Judd (who in one Wikileaks-released document laments Canadians’ “paroxysms of moral outrage” over the human rights abuses committed by his organization).

It must have been an odd sight to witness those CSIS veterans sharing a polite panel discussion with critics of human rights abuses such as of Amnesty International Canada’s Alex Neve, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Nathalie des Rosiers. One wonders if either of them directly challenged the CSIS men, perhaps asking why there has been no apology, no compensation, and no systemic changes in CSIS to prevent the kind of torture suffered not only by the abovementioned men, but by numerous others. Equally important, did conference organizers and participants consider the manner in which the scandal-plagued CSIS is accorded a significant degree of legitimization and acceptance by having its heavyweights appearing at such a gathering? Or that those who have been targeted, such as Maher Arar or Adil Charkoui, suffer an equal degree of de-legitimization by not inviting them onto the agenda?

As with any important political issue, who sits at the table of such conferences generally determines the scope of the discussion. In this instance, the absence of key voices raises significant issues about how the never-defined term “national security” is framed, filtered, and ultimately understood in this country. Such a closed, circular world logically produces a Canadian military that names First Nations advocates threats to national security and explains why the Canadian financial intelligence unit FINTRAC was found recently to have tarred environmentalists and animal rights activists as terrorists in their online tutorials.

In a similar vein, it will come as no surprise to rabble readers that most mainstream media outlets buy into such narrow narratives. Most reporters assigned to the national security beat are not physically embedded within the RCMP and CSIS in the way those covering the occupation of Afghanistan seem to become stenographers for the Canadian military. But they tend to write as if they were, buying the assumptions created and sustained by those who benefit most from them while generally ignoring the fact that these agencies have a historical profile that reads “pathological liar”.

Support the Return to Canada of Two Canadian Citizen Children and their Libyan Refugee Parents and Siblings Who Were Deported in 2008 and Whose Father

The Benhmuda family fled to Canada from Libya in July 2000 to seek safety from the Gaddafi regime. They built a life here, worked hard and went to school and contributed to the community. Two more children were born to the family, Omar and Adam. However, after 8 years here they were ordered to return and, despite the risk of persecution and torture under the Gaddafi regime, were sent back to Libya in 2008. The three years that have followed have been an intensely difficult journey of jail and torture for the father, as well as hellish living conditions in Tripoli and in a Maltese refugee camp for the whole family.

In February, 2011, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) produced a detailed report that called on Canada to resettle the Benhmuda family in the country they call their own: Canada. UNHCR said they are at risk in Libya and do not have adequate security and integration prospects in Malta.

Since that time, no action has been taken by the Canadian government to bring the Benhmuda family home.

The Benhmuda family need your support to come home to Canada. More detailed information on their case is below, including a link to an interview with the family on CBC’s The Current, along with suggestions on what you can do to help, including letter writing, financial support, and more.

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“If we receive an application from that family I can assure the House that it will be given every humanitarian consideration, and indeed dealt with on an accelerated basis." Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, June 23, 2011, House of Commons, in response to a question about whether he will take immediate steps to resettle the Benhmuda family in Canada.

Minister Kenney needs to hear from the voices of people across the country who will encourage him to do the right thing and return this family to Canada.

We are calling on the Canadian government to immediately bring the family to Canada, where they have well-developed roots, and so the children can resume their schooling without further disruption to their already traumatized lives.