by "abolissons AT gmail.com"
Source: The People's Commission Network
URL: [link]
Date: September 1, 2010


HALT THE TIDE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA
A Call for Solidarity from the People's Commission Network and No One Is Illegal Montreal

**See below for what you can do**

The People's Commission Network and No One Is Illegal Montreal call for solidarity with Muslim communities and individuals in Canada and Quebec who are experiencing even more intense Islamophobia and racism as a result of the media coverage of last week's "Project Samossa" arrests of Hiva Alizadeh, Khurram Sher and Misbahuddin Ahmed. Journalists have actually visited mosques where the people arrested have prayed, thereby greatly intensifying feelings of being vulnerable, under surveillance, marginalized and profiled simply for being Muslim or being perceived as such.

The People's Commission and No One Is Illegal Montreal are also concerned for the well-being of the three men who have been named by media as part of the alleged plot and are currently overseas. In recent years, we have seen similar RCMP and CSIS suspicions - even without intense media attention - result in the overseas detention and torture of Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, Abdullah Almalki and others. None of these individuals were ever charged with any crime and their names were later officially cleared. However, their lives continue to be marred by the immediate consequences of CSIS and RCMP actions, consequences that include tarnished reputations, the loss of freedom of movement, and, in one case, a freeze on all assets.

[ Read the rest ... ]

By Andy Worthington
Source: Any Worthington Blog
URL: [link]
Date: August 25, 2010


On August 12, the US administration’s intention to proceed with the war crimes trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, was temporarily delayed when Khadr’s military lawyer, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed in the courtroom in Guantánamo while cross-questioning a prosecution witness on the first full day of Khadr’s trial by Military Commission.

Lt. Col. Jackson’s collapse was attributed to complications resulting from a gall-bladder operation six weeks previously, but as he was airlifted off the island, and deputy chief defense counsel Brian Broyles acknowledged that Khadr’s trial would be suspended for at least a month, no one in a position of authority — either in the United States or Canada — appeared willing to take the opportunity to find a last-minute way to avoid proceeding with a trial that, to critics, demonstrates only that the Obama administration is incapable of resisting the kind of sweeping and often indiscriminate desire for vengeance that fueled the Bush administration in its response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

[ Read the rest ... ]

by Call-Out
Source: Justice for Hassan Diab
URL: [link]
Date: August 29, 2010


August 30, 2010: Court Date for Abuse of Process Application

We urge you to come to the Ontario Superior Court, located at 161 Elgin Street in Ottawa, on Monday August 30 at 10:00 AM, to show your support for Hassan.

On August 30, Hassan’s lawyer will file an abuse of process application. The application will detail how the French investigators and the Crown Attorney have continued to rely on flawed handwriting “evidence”, even after learning that handwriting samples alleged to have been written by Dr. Diab were actually written by someone else.

The extradition law and the public’s confidence in the administration of justice rest on trust that the requesting state will only submit reliable evidence to Canadian courts. However, this has not happened in Dr. Diab’s case. The French investigators and the Crown attorney continued to rely on “evidence” that they knew is fatally flawed.

Please come to court to show your support for due process and fundamental principles of justice!

To find the courtroom number, simply check with the information desk staff or look up Hassan’s name on the sheet posted on each courtroom door.

by REPORT-BACK
Source: No One Is Illegal - Vancouver
URL: [link]
Date: August 25, 2010


Vancouver, August 21, 2010

* For more PHOTOS from across the country (courtesy NOII groups, VMC, AW@L) visit [link]

On Saturday August 21st, close to 250 people gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Coast Salish Territories as part of a National Day of Action to
demand the release of detained Tamil asylum seekers and an end to racist and restrictive refugee policies.

The march opened with a traditional opening as Indigenous Elders welcomed the Tamil asylum seekers to their territories and condemned the government
and Jason Kenney. Speakers underscored the history of racist exclusion in Canadian immigration policy, the daily violence of detentions and deportations justified under the guise of ‘criminality’ and ‘security threats’, the commodification of migrants as exploitable labour in order to be deemed worthy, and how the hollow rhetoric of multiculturalism and inclusion unravels every time a boat of migrants challenges the Canadian state and its fortified border.

[ Read the rest ... ]

-


Source: The Montreal Gazette, August 7, 2010.

Source: Agence France Presse International
URL: [link]
Date: August 13, 2010


US NAVAL BASE AT GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — The Guantanamo trial of a Canadian captured by US forces in Afghanistan at age 15 has been postponed by 30 days so his lawyer can seek medical treatment in the United States, a US military official said Friday.

Omar Khadr's US military defense lawyer Jon Jackson collapsed Thursday at the end of court proceedings -- the first full prosecution at Guantanamo since President Barack Obama took office -- and was rushed to hospital on the US naval base.

The official said it was determined that Jackson has to be evacuated from the base to get medical treatment and will be on "convalescent leave" in the United States for 30 days.

On Thursday Jackson was rushed by ambulance to a medical facility on the base where he was placed on a morphine drip, according to Bryan Broyles, an official with the military defense lawyers' office.

Broyles said the incident was thought to be related to gall bladder surgery that Jackson underwent six weeks ago.

[ Read the rest ... ]

by Oakland Ross
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link]
Date: August 3, 2010

Jorge Sanabria did not come to Canada, after all.

The 45-year-old Peruvian development expert had been expected to deliver the keynote speech at a gala dinner June 26 at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Instead, Sanabria spent that evening at his home in Cusco, Peru, along with his wife, Jenny, and their 5-year-old daughter, Gabriela — just one more victim of a notoriously opaque piece of bureaucratese that has Canada written all over it.

You've heard of Catch-22? Meet Regulation 179.

It's vague, it's arbitrary, and it is giving this country a bad name.

“I think Canada is becoming more difficult to visit,” Sanabria said from Cusco. “It think its image with foreigners is becoming more and more difficult.”

He is not alone.

“It's completely arbitrary,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman, referring to the edict. “It affects us on so many levels — social, humanitarian, cultural, and business.”

Regulation 179 is a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that authorizes this country's visa officers abroad to reject potential visitors if they believe the applicant might try to stay in Canada.

[ Read the rest ... ]

by Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter
Source: The Toronto Star
URL: [link]
Date: August 4, 2010


Human rights violations over terrorism charges ‘shocking,’ judge decides

Abdullah Khadr walked out of a Toronto courtroom a free man Wednesday after an Ontario judge refused to extradite him to the United States to face terrorism charges.

“I think this is going to be a new beginning for me in life,” Khadr told reporters outside the court as his lawyers and family looked on.

Extradition orders to the U.S. are rarely denied, but Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer ruled Wednesday that “this was an exceptional case on many levels.”

The 29-year-old Canadian has been held in Toronto jail since a Boston court indicted him on terrorism charges in December 2005. He is accused of supplying weapons to Al Qaeda when he lived in Pakistan following the 9/11 attacks.

The surprise decision focused on the fact that the U.S. paid Pakistan a $500,000 (U.S.) bounty for the Canadian’s arrest in Islamabad in 2004 and that Khadr was held for 14 months in what Speyer called an “illegal and arbitrary” detention.

Speyer wrote in his 62-page ruling that the human rights violations suffered by Khadr were “both shocking and unjustifiable.”

“The United States was the driving force behind Khadr’s capture and detention,” Speyer wrote. “The payment of the bounty heavily influenced the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) to act in accordance with the United States agency’s wishes.”

[ Read the rest ... ]

by ACLU News Reelase
Source: Faisal Kutty's Website
URL: [link]
Date: July 7, 2010


List Blocks People From Flying Without Explanation Or Due Process

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are prohibited from flying to or from the United States or over U.S. airspace because they are on the government’s “No Fly List.” None of the individuals in the lawsuit, including a disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran stranded in Egypt and a U.S. Army veteran stuck in Colombia, have been told why they are on the list or given a chance to clear their names.

“More and more Americans who have done nothing wrong find themselves unable to fly, and in some cases unable to return to the U.S., without any explanation whatsoever from the government,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “A secret list that deprives people of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional.”

The ACLU, along with its affiliates in Oregon, Southern California, Northern California and New Mexico, filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The plaintiffs on the case are:

* Ayman Latif, a U.S. citizen and disabled Marine veteran living in Egypt who has been barred from flying to the United States and, as a result, cannot take a required Veterans’ Administration disability evaluation;

[ Read the rest ... ]

by unknown author
Source: The Globe and Mail
URL: [link]
Date: July 23, 2010


Federal Court sides with man accused of terrorist links, citing ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe information was obtained through torture

Canada's national security agency does not have an “effective mechanism” for ensuring it does not rely on evidence obtained by torture, the Federal Court has found.

The court sided with a man accused of terrorist links, who Ottawa is trying to deport, in finding there are “reasonable grounds” to believe some of the information against him was obtained through torture and is therefore inadmissible.

Mohamed Mahjoub was arrested in 2000 and held on a national security certificate, accused of links to an Egyptian Islamic terrorist organization.

In a motion in his case, he argued that the policy of CSIS to “not knowingly” rely on evidence from torture doesn't actually prevent it. The court agreed.

“In my view, these policies and practices do not provide for an effective mechanism to ensure that such information is actually excluded from the evidence,” writes Justice Edmond Blanchard.

“It is also clear from the record that the service does not have the means to independently investigate whether the information is obtained from torture.”

The court has ordered the government to review its information against Mr. Mahjoub and identify sources.

Mr. Mahjoub, married with three children, was initially released from prison under conditions amounting to house arrest in 2007. However, he asked to return to prison after the family supervising him said they could no longer deal with the onerous conditions imposed by the court.

He was ordered freed again in November 2009 after a months-long hunger strike — during which he lost more than 22 kilograms — to protest the conditions in the prison. Mr. Mahjoub was allowed to leave the holding centre in eastern Ontario as long as he wears a monitoring bracelet and honours other restrictions.

National security certificates are rarely used immigration tools for deporting non-Canadians considered a risk to the country.

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