Tweet
Photo credit and creative commons license:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coultart/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Remember when the "Shining City Upon the Hill" was going to inspire "freedom-loving people everywhere"? Here’s how that’s working out now. From canadaeast.com, we have this nugget of information:
A written statement filed by a former Canadian diplomat, with information about the possible torture of Afghan prisoners, has been ordered sealed on the grounds of national security.
Lawyers for the Military Police Complaints Commission haven’t been allowed to read the document filed by Richard Colvin, who worked at Canada’s provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar in 2006.
He was there when Canadian troops first began handing over captured Taliban fighters to Afghan authorities and signalled to the commission that he had information on what military police knew about alleged torture in Afghan prisons.
But federal lawyers have tried to have him removed from a witness list and today invoked Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, which prohibits the release of national security information and punishes those who don’t comply with five years in prison, on an affidavit he filed.
Gosh, I wonder where the Canadian government might have gotten the idea to use state secrets to hide evidence of torture? Here’s Daphne Eviatar from a couple of weeks ago on Obama’s "new, improved!" state secrets plan:
Today’s announcement says the government will use the privilege more sparingly, and requires the attorney general himself to sign off on its use. But the provision does not bar the government from using the privilege to try to dismiss cases alleging government wrongdoing.
“They don’t anywhere say, ‘we will not seek dismissal on state secrets grounds at the outset’” of a case, said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who’s come up against the privilege while representing victims of torture. “They say we’re going to make an effort to apply it as narrowly as possible. But that doesn’t change what they’ve been doing all along.”
What the Department of Justice has been doing all along is essentially what the Obama administration has done in one case Wizner’s working on, in which a victim of torture due to the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program sued Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing, claiming the company was partly responsible for helping transport CIA prisoners to other countries to be tortured. The government claimed that allowing the case to go forward would reveal state secrets and endanger national security, and asked the court to dismiss it. Eventually, the ACLU won the right to proceed with the litigation, but the Obama administration in June asked the court of appeals to reconsider and dismiss the case.
Yes, indeed. The US provides an example for others to emulate, doesn’t it?
9 Comments
We’ve seen this coming for a long time…. Once torture is destigmatized, it becomes universal, and ever more baroque. And the tactics to cover it up are pretty portable, too. We can’t “Blame Canada” now, can we?
You can blame Stephen Harper. Since Harper became Prime Minister, there has been a constant attempt to roll back legal/human rights in Canada. The good thing is that the push back is immediate. Harper would like a Patriot Act of his own to play with and tries to get it one step at a time.
One example of the attempt by Harper to suppress media freedom. It took almost 3 years, but he lost.
*******
“On Jan. 21, 2004, 10 RCMP officers raided the home of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill, and then the offices of the newspaper itself. The purpose of the raid was to learn how the reporter obtained secret documents relating to Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian arrested in the United States as a suspected terrorist.
The Mounties executed search warrants issued under the new Security of Information Act, Canada’s response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The new act replaced the old Official Secrets Act, but its so-called leakage provisions were drawn directly from the old act, which had been criticized as archaic and poorly written.
However, in October 2006, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the leakage sections of the act and rendered those warrants null and void.
“It’s a tremendous affirmation of the importance of freedom of the press and freedom of expression,” said O’Neill’s lawyer, David Paciocco.
O’Neill’s legal team argued the Security of Information Act provisions used to obtain the RCMP search warrants violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “
http://www.cbc.ca/news/backgro…..media.html
Given how the Canadian government has acted for years on the Omar Khadr case, I doubt highly that anything actually “spread” there from somewhere else. Darius Rejali names three causes for torture in democracies. Roughly, the desire for total safety plus the delegation of government to a professional class (the bureaucracy of experts) causes interrogation torture. The desire for total judicial accuracy, for confessions because circumstantial evidence isn’t good enough, causes confession torture. The desire to clearly demarcate humanity from those not human causes administrative (mass) torture.
The governments of the ISAF coalition other than the United States, to their credit, all pitched involvement before their legislative bodies for what it was, a peacekeeping mission to rebuild the Afghan nation. To their detriment, they all promised that it would be nearly casualty free. In 2006, the Taliban began their offensive in Kandahar Province (Canada), and Helmand Province (Britain), and those promises could no longer be kept. And so the need for absolute safety among the troops there.
The American People are such suckers, they believe we need secrecy for National Security. Secrecy has allowed our Government to cover up all it’s mistakes. From the boondoggles of military projects that failed, the crooks in Government, the wasted money, and the failures to do thir jobs. In a free Country like ours is supposed to be, ” of the people, by the people, and for the people,” there should be no secrets from the people.
Secrecy didn’t prevent Pearl Harbor or 911. Secrecy has not protected us, only those who are working against us. WE have allowed that Government that Government thats is supposed to be of us, become dictators over us. It tells us what it will give us, what we can or can’t know, what we can or can’t do, and even what rights we have. Secrecy has been this Countries downfall, because we know not what they do.
Andy Worthington is coming to the US.
*******
“Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners — Shaker Aamer (who is still held), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes — “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.
For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Andy Worthington or Polly Nash. Andy will also be in the United States from November 5 to November 12, 2009, showing the film in New York, Virginia, Washington DC and California, in association with the Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law, World Can’t Wait, the Future of Freedom Foundation and the New America Foundation. Details to follow soon. “
http://www.andyworthington.co……uantanamo/
Thanks for that. Sounds like a movie worth seeing.
You’re welcome. It’ll be powerful for sure.
” Date: 7 October 2009
MADRID: Today the Spanish Senate, acting to confirm a decision already taken under pressure from powerful governments accused of grave crimes, will limit Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction. Yesterday, ahead of the change of law, a legal case was filed at the Audiencia Nacional against four United States presidents and four United Kingdom prime ministers for commissioning, condoning and/or perpetuating multiple war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq.
This case, naming George H W Bush, William J Clinton, George W Bush, Barack H Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown, is brought by Iraqis and others who stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people and in defence of their rights and international law. “
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/index.htm