CSIS

OTTAWA (CP) - The watchdog over CSIS recommends the spy agency make it official policy to consider a country's human rights record and possible security abuses before handing over information. Though the Security Intelligence Review Committee doesn't name names, it appears the recommendation clearly stems from three high-profile cases of Arab-Canadians, all related to the Maher Arar affair, who were imprisoned and interrogated in Syria about alleged terrorist links. "SIRC believes that CSIS's policy framework should reflect the challenges of dealing with countries suspected of human rights violations," says the review committee's annual report tabled Thursday in Parliament.

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TORONTO — Canada's police and intelligence agencies, through their use of paid Muslim informants, effectively have spies in virtually every major mosque in Toronto, according to well-connected members of the Muslim community. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service does not deny operating inside Muslim religious institutions, but insists that it hires informants to report on people, not places. Those knowledgeable about mosques and the tactics of security services say it often amounts to the same thing.

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EDITORIAL: Unreliable sources

Is Abu Zubaydah really "one of Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenants," as he was described in a decision of Canada's Federal Court? Or is he a mentally disturbed, low-level al-Qaeda errand boy whose evidence was extracted by torture, as he's described in a new book by journalist Ron Suskind? Abu Zubaydah is one of the known accusers of Mohamed Harkat, the Ottawa man now out on bail after being detained for the last three and a half years as a suspected terrorist. The other accuser is the Algerian government -- the government Mr. Harkat once opposed. Mr. Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine, describes Abu Zubaydah's capture in March 2002. During interrogations that included simulated drowning and beating, Mr. Suskind writes, Abu Zubaydah spilled information. Some of it was useful, some not. In 2005, the Federal Court of Canada decided that it was reasonable to detain Mr. Harkat. The court said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service learned from a foreign agency that Abu Zubaydah had fingered Mr. Harkat -- by his "physical description and his activities" -- as the operator of a guest house for terrorists. It's possible that Canadian authorities also have strong independent evidence against Mr. Harkat. It is also possible Abu Zubaydah was telling the truth about Mr. Harkat. But it is also possible that the ravings of a desperate man were recklessly taken at face value by Canadian intelligence. Mr. Suskind's book illustrates the dangers of relying on the intelligence of a foreign intelligence service, especially if it gathers evidence through dubious means. If we're going to lock people up or deport them, we need solid intelligence of our own. © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.. All rights reserved.

Filmon making issue a priority

Canada's spy service should stop destroying original notes or recordings, the chair of the service's civilian oversight committee says. Gary Filmon said in an interview that one of his priorities as the new chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee is to push for a change in the security service's policy that requires employees to shred or erase original material, arguing that there are cases where information can be stored without infringing on the privacy rights of Canadians. "To just have a blanket (direction to) destroy after such and such a period of time doesn't make sense to us and that's what we're saying to CSIS," said Filmon, a former Manitoba premier, who became SIRC's chair in June.

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Ottawa - The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been giving false assurances to the government that it can guarantee the intelligence it receives from foreign agencies is not obtained by torture, a review committee said. "CSIS was not in a position to provide such an absolute assurance" and should stop saying so, the Security Intelligence Review Committee said in its report to Parliament yesterday. The issue came to light because SIRC, an independent watchdog established by Parliament, wanted to know more about the hundreds of intelligence-sharing agreements CSIS has with foreign services after U.S. allies deported Canadian Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured. SIRC discovered that CSIS had been telling the Department of Foreign Affairs and ministers for years that it would scrutinize the information for other countries.

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The watchdog of Canada's spy agency has finally said what many - especially the five Muslim men held under security certificates - have known for some time. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service does shoddy work and for some strange reason known only to it, destroys key pieces of evidence such as tape recordings and notes. In a secret report, obtained by news organizations last week, Paule Gauthier, former chairperson of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, slammed CSIS for a hasty, slipshod investigation and a "regrettable" attitude that people supporting Arab causes are suspect.

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A former CSIS member lashes out at the spy agency, but CSIS stands by its investigative work.

A former member of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the spy agency's recent slipshod investigation of Bhupinder Liddar whom CSIS mistakenly declared a security threat because of its "regrettable" attitude that supporting Arab causes can be suspicious, is "just another typical example of how CSIS destroys some peoples' lives and careers." The former CSIS member, who did not want to be named, told The Hill Times last week that the spy agency has had to pay "more than a few individuals as a result of the spy agency's suspicions being reported as hard facts," and said the spy agency will "fight any attempts to get the actual information they used to claim he is a security threat because the service does not want it to be known that they never had anything substantive about Mr. Liddar, only fears and suspicions."

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Canada doesn't want information gleaned through torture, she writes

OTTAWA - CSIS does not want intelligence from foreign agencies if the information may have been obtained by torture, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan says, contradicting testimony from senior CSIS officials last year at the Arar inquiry. In a letter to Amnesty International, 10 months after it raised the issue, Ms. McLellan says that to protect privacy and human rights, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is very careful about the information it exchanges with foreign agencies. But her comments, released yesterday in response to allegations that Canadian authorities may have been party to torture in Syria, are at odds with CSIS policy as senior officials at the agency outlined it at the Arar commission of inquiry. They said CSIS would use information obtained by torture if it could be corroborated.

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Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew apologized Wednesday for how Canada's spy agency sullied the personal and professional life of a consular appointee. The apology comes after a report obtained by The Globe and Mail and other news agencies revealed that Bhupinder Singh Liddar was denied a consular appointment to India because of a hasty, slipshod assessment by a rookie CSIS investigator. In the report by Paule Gauthier, the former chairwoman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, a CSIS investigator misinterpreted work Liddar did in the Middle East and Ottawa as long as 30 years ago.

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Watchdog 'misled' by CSIS Secret report blasts agency's investigation of public servant it deemed a security risk

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service "purposefully misled" the agency charged with overseeing it in a likely attempt to "suppress information that was embarrassing to the Service," a new report finds. "I wish that such events never occur again," Paule Gauthier, former chairwoman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, writes in a secret report obtained yesterday by The Globe and Mail and other news organizations. In one of the most strongly worded official criticisms of CSIS to date, Ms. Gauthier faults the agency for a hasty, slipshod investigation and a "regrettable" attitude that supporting Arab causes can be suspicious. The long-anticipated report follows a complaint from Bhupinder S. Liddar, a public servant whom CSIS declared a security risk after his 2003 diplomatic posting to India.

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