The idealist

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:03 PM - 2 Comments

The Literary Review of Canada excerpts Jack Layton’s foreword to a new book about Charles Taylor, George Grant and CB Macpherson.

Tommy Douglas understood that our human journey had to be a collective project, something we would, could and should do together for and with each other, as a community of free individuals. Freedom, in this view—an idealist view—has enormous positive potential, not just for individuals but for all people as part of a fabric of diverse communities. Obvious questions flow. How can the pursuit of what would be right and good for the whole community be sought, at the same time, by each free and independent individual? How can a group effort not limit liberty but rather enhance it?

The idealist current holds that human society has the potential to achieve liberty when people work together to form a society in which equality means more than negative liberty, the absolute and protected right to run races against each other to determine winners. Idealists imagine a positive liberty that enables us to build together toward common objectives that fulfill and even surpass our individual goals.

The real Jack Layton

By John Geddes - Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 19 Comments

Christopher Wahl

About a month after he led the NDP to its election breakthrough last May 2, Jack Layton was still at a loss to explain what had really happened on the campaign trail. The game-changing outcome was plain enough: his New Democrats had vaulted into second place for the first time ever, ahead of the Liberals. But what alchemy had occurred in the minds of so many Canadian voters, especially in Quebec, for Layton’s personal appeal to lift his party to government-in-waiting status?

Layton, a meticulous political pro who never went into an interview without a firm fix on what he wanted to say, for once seemed stymied by the question. “I’d go into the crowds and people would stop and have a word. There were a lot of personal words—I don’t know,” he said when Maclean’s asked him back in early June what had been different this time around. “There was certainly enthusiasm, but something deeper. I haven’t put my finger on the emotions, but there were more emotions there than in previous campaigns.”

More than even he might have realized. After his death last week following his swift second bout with cancer, those emotions found release as a national torrent of grief. And Layton had applied himself in his last days to channelling the outpouring to come. In an extraordinary merging of the deeply personal and frankly political, he worked with his advisers to ensure that his death drew attention to the convictions that drove him in life. Both the farewell letter they drafted and the funeral they planned aimed to inspire social democrats. Friends and family had often said that trying to draw a line between Layton’s public and private sides was difficult. In his passing, they became indistinguishable.

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The government’s case against Cindor Reeves stinks

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 4:50 PM - 0 Comments

Since beginning four years ago to dig into the story of Cindor Reeves — the man who helped bring former Liberian president and warlord Charles Taylor to trial in The Hague, and whom Canada is now deporting — I have occasionally worried that there might be some missing piece of the puzzle that I didn’t have. Perhaps the government has information about Reeves that would explain its determination to send him back to Liberia, where he faces murder, other than incompetence, malice, and a perverted sense of justice. Continue…

Update on Cindor Reeves

By Michael Petrou - Monday, June 13, 2011 at 2:29 PM - 6 Comments

Cindor Reeves, the Canadian refugee claimant who risked his life to help build the legal case against his brother-in-law, the former Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor, has received a removal order from the Canada Border Services Agency and may shortly be deported.  Continue…

This week: Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 2 Comments

Aijaz Rahi/AP

The best politics is no politics

Given his status as a revered spiritual leader, retirement was never really an option for the Dalai Lama. But the 76-year-old’s decision to formally relinquish his political duties to an elected member of Tibet’s government-in-exile could prove to have a meaningful impact on his followers. He revealed his intentions on the 52nd anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, with elections to take place on March 20. By making good on a long-held promise, the Dalai Lama seeks to modernize the Tibetan movement while simultaneously making it more difficult for the Chinese government to capitalize on any power vacuum in the wake of his death.

How to spend a billion

She was dubbed “the wealthiest divorcee in history,” and Patricia Kluge‘s divorce spoils were rivalled only by those of Anna Murdoch, ex-wife of Rupert, and Slavica Ecclestone, ex-wife of Formula One boss Bernie. Kluge was believed to have received over US$1 billion in her 1990 divorce from media mogul John Kluge, which was reportedly amicable. Easy come, easy go. A series of bad business ventures followed, including a critically admired winery that supplied the wine for Chelsea Clinton‘s wedding last year. This week the 62-year-old’s mansion was foreclosed, her vineyard seized, and her jewels, artwork and artifacts sold. The US$3.8 million she got for a Qing dynasty clock (among other assets) wasn’t enough; Kluge is in debt to the tune of US$69 million. Continue…

Deporting Cindor Reeves "morally questionable": IRB tribunal officer

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 17 Comments

The tribunal officer assigned by the Immigration and Refugee Board to the case of Cindor Reeves, former brother-in-law of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, judged him to be a credible witness whose exclusion from refugee protection in Canada would be “morally questionable.”

A tribunal officer is an IRB employee whose role “is not to oppose, or to support, the refugee claim, but to help ensure that all relevant information is before the member to decide the claim.” In his written observations of the case, Richard Henderson argued against excluding Reeves from refugee protection because of his alleged involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity:

“A restrictive or narrow interpretation of the exclusion clauses is particularly warranted in this case, not just because, as I will suggest in the next section, Mr. Reeves would be in extreme danger should he return to Liberia, but also because it is precisely Mr. Reeves’ involuntary and minor involvement in the weapons for diamonds trade that allowed him to gather the kind of ‘high value’ intelligence that played a key role in ultimately bringing down Charles Taylor. To exclude him because of this involvement would seem to be both morally questionable, a sentiment expressed in the Maclean’s articles, and inconsistent with the intent of the exclusion clauses, i.e. they were surely not meant to exclude individuals who were, in effect, acting as double agent.”

Reeves’ refugee case is different than most because the Canadian government — through the minister for public safety — intervened to argue against his appeal for refugee protection. Continue…

You can't govern a country 140 characters at a time

By the editors - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 2:39 PM - 35 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

As might be expected, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a lot on his mind these days. We know this from recent postings to his Twitter account. Last week, for example, he wished everyone a “Happy Lunar New Year!” Before that he passed along Christmas greetings from “Rachel, Ben, Laureen and myself” and congratulated Ontario-born baseball player Joey Votto on being named National League MVP. Oh yes, he also rewrote the nation’s Internet policy. All in 140 characters.

Twitter is the popular social networking tool that allows users to send out short, frequent blasts of information. Celebrities, sports stars and anyone else who sees a need to provide continual updates on their latest thoughts and activities have flocked to Twitter. Add politicians to this list as well.

Harper has been tweeting since September 2008. Many of his cabinet ministers and parliamentary rivals tweet as well. As a marketing and networking tool, Twitter has become useful, perhaps even necessary, to the business of politics. But is this how Canadians expect their government to make policy? Is it possible to rule a country 140 characters at a time?

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'You know the price for snitching'

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 28 Comments

In the last three weeks, Cindor Reeves’ relatives in Liberia have been attacked by men looking for him and his wife. They abducted four children who are still missing. The following email is from his mother-in-law:

I don’t know if I will be alive before this message reach you. Last night some arm man came to my house,and toke my four ( 4) children away. They came and met some people in the house and wanted to know where C.R and [...] are,when they could’nt get good result then they ask for me and make a statement  saying we will kill those ungratful people starting with that socall mother in law [...] .Atthat moment, I wos able to recongnize the voice of one.This follow came to the house as asympthizer, He repeated we will kill them know matter what. By the grace of God I was able run through the bathroom window with alappl and a T shirt,Leaving my children behind dont know their where about now.If  Ishould survie  it will be by the grace of God.You people force me to come back to Liberia saying Liberia was save for me now see what is happening to me? now where will I run to or find my kids

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Cindor Reeves, the Vancouver Sun, and more on the government's response

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 8:02 AM - 0 Comments

Colleagues in the Maclean’s Ottawa bureau can attest to the fact that during the almost four years that I have been writing about Cindor Reeves, I have often fumed and ranted about the fact that other Canadian media refused to follow this magazine’s lead on the story. I’m pleased that changed this week. Here’s the Vancouver Sun’s take.

In other developments, Rick Dykstra, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s parliamentary press secretary, tells the Toronto Star’s Tonda MacCharles that Reeves has not given the government permission to speak about his case. This is not true. Reeves may not have given the government permission to speak to the Toronto Star. But Reeves provided the government with written permission to talk to me about the case in 2009. After demanding such permission as a precondition to talking, the government still refused to say anything.   Continue…

Cindor Reeves and the Toronto Star

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 11:01 AM - 5 Comments

The Toronto Star is now following the story. Here’s my piece from two weeks ago the triggered the current wave of coverage. Here’s my more in-depth feature from 2009.

Cindor Reeves and the Globe and Mail

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 3:29 PM - 17 Comments

The Globe has published an editorial calling on Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to allow Cindor Reeves to stay in Canada.

The Globe’s editorial is based entirely on my articles and blog posts, although they don’t acknowledge as much. I admit I find this bothersome, but am pleased other media are now following the story.

The CBC’s interview with Reeves and with Alan White, former chief of investigations for the Special Court, meanwhile, is now available online.

Canada's deportation of Cindor Reeves: the government's response

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 6:01 AM - 70 Comments

I’ve been trying to get a response from Immigration Minister Jason Kenney on the impending deportation of Cindor Reeves since Monday. Reeves is the former brother-in-law of Charles Taylor, who brutalized Liberia and, through a proxy army, neighbouring Sierra Leone, for more than a decade. Reeves smuggled guns and diamonds for Taylor before secretly turning against him to cooperate with the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is now trying Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity in The Hague. Reeves asked for and received nothing for his work with the Special Court, which was crucial to building a case against Taylor. His life has been threatened multiple times since, and there is good reason to believe he will be murdered by Taylor loyalists if he is returned to Liberia.

Generally, when this government wants to avoid answering difficult questions, their response to media inquiries follows a predictable pattern. You, as a journalist will never actually talk to someone who will answer your questions. You pose your questions to one person; someone else emails you statements that have little relation to the questions you asked.

Given the injustice and hypocrisy this case entails, as well as the fact that a man’s life may soon end because of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s decision, I had expected something more. I shouldn’t have. Continue…

Canada on verge of deporting man who brought a tyrant to justice

By Michael Petrou - Friday, January 28, 2011 at 11:44 AM - 40 Comments

Cindor Reeves, a man largely responsible for bringing to justice one of the most blood-soaked tyrants in recent history, has had his refugee case rejected by Canada and may soon be deported to his native Liberia, where he runs a high risk of being murdered.

Reeves was the brother-in-law of Charles Taylor, who in 1989 launched a civil war in Liberia that killed more than 200,000 and left Taylor in charge of much of the country. Taylor was elected president during a brief lull in the fighting in 1997. Taylor also created a proxy army in neighbouring Sierra Leone that called itself the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF. The RUF’s child soldiers terrorized Sierra Leone for years. Taylor used them to obtain diamonds. He sent the RUF weapons; they sent him gems. Thousands died as a result.

It is for these crimes the Taylor is now on trial in The Hague. He’s there in large part because Cindor Reeves — of his own volition, without receiving anything, and at enormous risk to himself — helped the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone build its case against Taylor.

“I am willing to go on the record and confirm that CR provided invaluable information that led to the indictment of Charles Taylor and others who were ultimately convicted,” Alan White, chief of investigations for the court from 2002 to 2005, said in a 2009 email that was published in Maclean’s. He further explained Reeves’ help in a 2009 affidavit: “I could always rely on the information and support provided by Mr. Reeves. In his effort to bring peace and security to the region he endangered himself and his family, yet he did so willingly without asking anything in return but for protection for his family. The court owes Mr. Reeves a debt of gratitude for his support and service.”

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"[People were] begging him while the executions were going on. It's a horrible thing to talk about."

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 1:58 PM - 5 Comments

My story about Bill Horace, a Toronto man who has been accused by multiple witnesses and sources of war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been posted on our website.

Safe haven for an alleged killer

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 11:33 AM - 19 Comments

Photograph by Patrick Robert/ Sygma/ Corbis

A former commander in a rebel Liberian army who has been accused by multiple witnesses and former associates of war crimes and crimes against humanity is living freely in Toronto.

Bill Horace was a general in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, a militia that gathered in neighbouring Ivory Coast and invaded Liberia in 1989, plunging the country into more than a decade of intermittent war. That conflict killed tens of thousands and featured the widespread use of child soldiers and mass atrocities against civilians—including sexual slavery, cannibalism, and indiscriminate slaughter. Charles Taylor, who led that army and was eventually elected president before being forced from office in 2003, is now on trial in The Hague on war crimes charges.

Maclean’s spoke with Bill Horace in early 2009. “Yes, I was with NPFL. Of course I was NPFL,” he said during a brief telephone conversation, referring to the National Patriotic Front of Liberia by its initials. Horace said he would speak about his time in the NPFL at a later date, but then ignored numerous messages left on his phone or with his former wife. Reached by phone this January, he refused to discuss his past and said his lawyer would call.

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A tyrant on trial

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 11:37 AM - 8 Comments

It can be lonely writing about and covering wars and humans rights atrocities in Africa. Nobody really cares – at least not as much as they might had the victims been from almost anywhere else on the planet.

Consider the coverage afforded to the civil wars in Liberia and in the former Yugoslavia. They happened at around the same time. More died in Liberia. How many reading this even know that Liberia was consumed by a horrific, anarchic conflict for much of the 1990s?

It was, and so was next door Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor – first a warlord and then president of Liberia – is now on trial in The Hague for his role in the latter conflict. He’s on the stand now. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is posting daily transcripts. They’re worth reading.

The world's first analog blogger

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 1 Comment

Every day at 7 a.m., you can find Alfred Sirleaf working inside a small shack on a busy street corner in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. He reads the papers, consults with his small staff of reporters, and checks text messages from tipsters around the country. Then he picks up a piece of chalk, goes outside, and writes the day’s news headlines in large, clear letters on a blackboard facing the street. He may be the world’s only analog blogger.

Sirleaf’s been running his blackboard newspaper, called “The Daily Talk,” since 2000. Back then, the media was heavily censored under Charles Taylor’s repressive regime. “We had a system in Liberia where a few people reigned and made decisions for the masses,” Sirleaf says. “That’s what inspired me to figure out how to communicate with the people.” The government wasn’t happy with him. The blackboard was destroyed—twice—and Sirleaf was thrown in jail and eventually forced into exile. When a media-friendly government replaced Taylor in 2003, Sirleaf returned to rebuild his news empire. Continue…

Reeves claim now cleared to proceed

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Last month, Maclean’s wrote about Cindor Reeves, the brother-in-law of former Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor. Taylor was forced into exile in 2003 and is now on trial in The Hague on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Reeves is now a refugee claimant in Canada.

Originally, Reeves was Taylor’s ally—he helped him smuggle diamonds and weapons between Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s. But later he turned against Taylor and risked his life to bring him to justice, first by spying for MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, then by working with the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which eventually indicted Taylor. Continue…

Canada spends millions on the court that's prosecuting Charles Taylor-but doesn't want to protect the man who risked his life to bring the tyrant to justice

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 10:16 PM - 1 Comment

From this week’s print magazine. The story, in a nutshell, is this:

Charles Taylor’s brother-in-law, Cindor Reeves, risked his life to help the Special Court for Sierra Leone build a case against Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president who controlled an army of murderous, drug-crazed child soldiers in next door Sierra Leone. Reeves is now a refugee claimant in Canada. Canada appears poised to kick him out.

The man who brought down a tyrant

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 11 Comments

It was June 2002 when Cindor Reeves was first tipped off that his brother-in-law, the president of Liberia, had sent a team of assassins to murder him.

At 30 years of age, Reeves was already a seasoned gunrunner and diamond smuggler. His brother-in-law was Charles Taylor, who in 1989 had launched a long-running civil war with his rebel fighters in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia that killed more than 200,000 but left Taylor in charge of much of the country. (He was elected president during a brief lull in the fighting in 1997.) The Liberian war also spilled over its borders. Taylor had created a proxy army next door in Sierra Leone that called itself the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF. Since 1991, the RUF and its legions of drug-crazed child soldiers had terrorized Sierra Leone, killing and hacking off the limbs of tens of thousands of civilians, and enslaving thousands more to mine for diamonds. Continue…

War Criminals Old and New

By Michael Petrou - Friday, October 31, 2008 at 11:25 AM - 30 Comments

All things considered, Helmut Oberlander, the 84-year-old veteran of a Second World War Nazi killing squad who has just been stripped of his Canadian citizenship and ordered deported, is extraordinarily lucky to have lived this long.

As a child, he first survived Stalin’s state-manufactured famine that killed more than two million Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. Ethnic Germans such as Oberlander living in the Soviet Union were targeted during Stalin’s purges of 1937 and 1938, but Oberlander survived these as well. The odds against his long life grew even longer the moment Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans to Kazakhstan and Siberia, where many were worked to death. Oberlander avoided this. He also avoided the fate of the more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died fighting the invading Germans, or under their devastating occupation. Instead, he was drafted by the German army in 1941 and put to work as an interpreter for an Einsatzkommando mobile killing squad, a subgroup of the Einsatzgruppen task forces that murdered hundreds of thousands of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet political commissars – usually by shooting the victims into mass graves. Oberlander’s unit was also issued a poison gas van.

How much choice the 17-year-old Oberlander had in his assignment is debatable. Many Ukrainians willingly collaborated with and fought for the Germans, whom they initially saw as liberators from a regime that had intentionally starved so many of them to death. More fought against them, recognizing Nazi Germany as a regime of unmatched genocidal brutality. There is no evidence that Oberlander ever killed anyone himself. The Federal Court judge who upheld his deportation order concluded that hiding his past involvement in a Nazi death squad deprived Oberlander of the right to Canadian citizenship. Continue…

Some co-commissioners are more equal than others

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:10 PM - 0 Comments

Amount paid to Charles Taylor for his work on the reasonable accommodations commission: $182,187.50

Amount paid to Gérard Bouchard: $398,162.25

Bouchard’s explanation for the disparity in income is surprisingly simple: He did more work than Taylor did, and the two were paid by the hour. (According to Le Devoir, they both got $137.50 an hour.) Apparently, Bouchard could’ve charged even more, too. The Université du Québec à Chicoutimi sociologist says he worked for free from November 2007 all the way through to the final report’s completion at the end of March.

In the end, the commission came in way under budget—probably a good thing, considering the Charest government doesn’t seem enthused about having to actually follow up on the report.

Crisis? What crisis? (Oh, that crisis.)

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, May 23, 2008 at 6:51 PM - 0 Comments

Why are these men smiling? The very reasonable and accommodating Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor

“I don’t know many societies in the world where we could have had this type of exercise on such explosive subjects in such a serene context.” -Charles Taylor, as quoted by La Presse’s Yves Boisvert in his column today.

Quebec is a place where the past tends to speak very loudly, and it can be a confusing and schizophrenic place to be. Hope and despair are interchangeable; everything can be fine right up until everything goes to hell. It’s euphoric and fucked up, awesome and maddening. I love it.

Such was the range of emotions as I read the reams of ink spilled over the Bouchard-Taylor report on reasonable accommodations this morning and afternoon. Initial response: cautious optimism. By holding hearings across the province in which anyone and everyone could air opinions on the prickly subject of race, language and culture, no matter how ill-formed or hateful, Quebec underwent the equivalent of public root canal surgery. In doing so, the province held a very open and frank debate of the type you won’t likely ever hear in the rest of the country, even though you probably should. Not only did no one get hurt, the commissioners produced a cerebral, nuanced and at times ponderous report, larded with suggestions – encourage French, enforce secularism in the public domain – and feel-good bromides (see quote, above.)

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Reasonable accommodations, free parking

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Marty’s post on the Bouchard-Taylor leak fiasco got me thinking, yet again, about what a peculiar beast the Bouchard-Taylor “commission” on reasonable accommodations is. Was. Uh, still is, until tomorrow’s news conference.

It’s still not entirely clear what Jean Charest was trying to accomplish by naming this commission. My very strong hunch is that he wanted to kick a nasty debate forward past the then-looming election and deal with the mess later. If his goals were as modest as that, it seems to have worked. If he was actually seeking wisdom on the proper saw-off between the standards of the metropolitan community and the immigrant communities (plural), well, he seems to have gone about it in odd ways. Continue…