The apparatus

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 7 Comments

The New York Times magazine convenes a panel of contributors, including Michael Ignatieff, to discuss the ramifications of 9/11.

The most obvious consequence of 9/11 to me has been the creation of a new national security state, to rival the one created at the start of the Cold War. It is an archipelago beneath democratic scrutiny, and it has done liberal democracies real damage: rendition, torture, detention without trial, Guantánamo, military tribunals. Its justification is that it has prevented an attack on the homeland. But this is a strange kind of justification: the absence of apocalypse is held to justify a permanent state of emergency, extending indefinitely into the future…

The concern I have about the whole world opened up after 9/11 is this archipelago, not just of drones, but of communication intercepts, Internet monitoring, which preserves our security at the price of … what? We don’t even know. I’m relatively trusting, far from paranoid, but we do have a new institutional problem:  to subject special forces, cybercommand, the boys with the drones, to some form of democratic oversight and control, if we are to stay what we say we are.

Essential, but unused

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 4:46 PM - 22 Comments

Further to the Prime Minister’s comments about the usefulness of the two anti-terrorism provisions that he hopes to reintroduce, I emailed the offices of the ministers of justice and public safety with the following question.

Were the two anti-terror provisions that the government wishes to reinstate ever used before they expired?

Shortly thereafter a response arrived from the office of Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. It reads, in full, as follows. Continue…

Abuse in a time of fear

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 28 Comments

Barbara Falk compares the Rosenbergs and Omar Khadr.

American justice has been marred in both the Cold War and the War on Terror by a combination of politically motivated prosecutions with larger didactic purposes, the over-reliance on conspiracy charges to lower the burden of proof, and the relaxation of the rules of evidence law. In both eras, the refrain of national security has been invoked. But it is at times of national insecurity that legal safeguards are needed the most, and it is to the most politically unpopular defendants already demonized by the media and in the court of public opinion that the most stringent due-process requirements should be applied. To do otherwise, as both the cases of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and of Omar Khadr attest, is to politicize justice and abuse the rule of law.

Never let a crisis go to waste

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 29, 2010 at 10:28 PM - 0 Comments

In the aftermath of an international terror scare that is presently topping the news in the United States and Britain, one that necessitated the scrambling of Canadian fighter jets, the Prime Minister’s Office identifies the most important takeaway.

The Prime Minister’s Office pointed to the incident to support their decision to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets. “Whether it is the CF-18s or the F-35s, Canada’s air force needs the right equipment to protect Canadian airspace,” said Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas. “Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals and their coalition partners would cancel the deal to buy the F-35s. They would rather use kites to defend Canada than fighter jets.”

By the way (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 1:27 PM - 0 Comments

Immediately before voting on the long-gun registry last night, the House voted 220-84 to advance Bill C-17 to the public safety committee for further consideration. Bill C-17 essentially aims to reinstate certain anti-terrorism provisions, including investigative hearings and preventive detention, that expired in 2007.

The legislation, which has a rather long and complicated history, was debated on Monday and Tuesday—and the discussions there of civil liberties, justice and terrorism would seem rather relevant, if obviously not quite as exciting as the question of whether or not gun owners should be required to fill out the necessary paperwork to register their firearms.

Vindication for an undercover informant

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 11:46 AM - 16 Comments

When his testimony wraps up sometime in the coming days, the man once known as Shaher Elsohemy will step off the stand and disappear back into the arms of the witness protection program. For obvious reasons, nothing about his new life can be revealed. Not his fake name. Not his whereabouts. Nothing. But one thing is absolutely certain: when he does leave the witness box and return to location unknown, he can walk away a happy man—vindicated, finally, after all these years.

Until last week, when he showed his face for the first time since 2006, Elsohemy was famous for two things: helping the RCMP topple the worst of the so-called “Toronto 18,” and being paid millions of dollars in the process. For more than three years, the Mounties’ star informant had to stay hidden in the shadows and keep his mouth shut while countless fellow Muslims attacked his credibility. They called him a traitor. A rat. A money-hungry snitch who deserves to “suffer in this life and the next.” More than one defence lawyer accused him of concocting lies in order to line his pockets.

Continue…

The merciless and meticulous Toronto 18 ringleader goes to prison for life

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 5:49 PM - 30 Comments

When he wasn’t plotting mass murder (and sometimes when he was) Zakaria Amara worked behind the cash register at a Canadian Tire gas station. In the spring of 2006—completely unaware that the RCMP had a tiny recording device hidden somewhere inside the kiosk—Amara looked across the counter and confided in one of his fellow terrorists. He told the man he “won’t feel sorry” if the cops throw him in jail before completing his deadly plan. “As long as I’ve tried my best.”

His best, of course, was not good enough. And on Monday afternoon, the radical young ringleader who tried and failed to detonate truck bombs in the name of Islam was handed his punishment: a life sentence.

Siding with prosecutors, Justice Bruce Durno said Amara’s master plan—a trio of massive explosions at the Toronto Stock Exchange, the downtown offices of Canada’s spy agency, and an unnamed military base—was “the most serious kind of terrorism imaginable” and deserves the harshest possible sentence. “It is difficult to put into words Zakaria Amara’s degree of responsibility,” the judge ruled. “He was the leader and directing mind of a plot that would have resulted in the most horrific crime Canada has ever seen. He attended to every detail and gave those under him explicit instructions and encouragement to pursue their objectives. He said going to jail would be alright as long as he tried.”

Jail is exactly where he will stay—indefinitely. The life sentence, the most severe penalty ever issued under Canada’s anti-terrorism provisions, means the 24-year-old Mississauga, Ont., man will remain behind bars until the day he dies, or the day he is granted parole. And even if he is eventually released on good behaviour, today’s ruling ensures that the confessed mastermind of the so-called “Toronto 18” will remain under some sort of state supervision (an electronic ankle bracelet, perhaps) for the rest of his life. (On paper, Amara is eligible to apply for parole in six years and three months, but it’s hard to imagine such a dangerous man being allowed to walk the streets anytime soon.)

Wearing a purple sweater vest and a neatly trimmed beard, Amara sat quietly in a bulletproof prisoner’s box as Justice Durno spent more than an hour reading his 48-page decision to a Brampton, Ont., courtroom packed with family, friends and journalists. Three days earlier, Amara issued a stunning public apology to “fellow Canadians,” insisting that he no longer subscribes to the radical Islamic ideology that drove his terrorist fantasies. He vowed to change his ways, said he was “lucky” to have been caught before his bombs exploded, and promised to emerge from prison “a man of construction,” not “a man of destruction.”

“Your honour,” he said. “I will embrace whatever sentence you give since in reality I deserve much more than a mere sentence.”

On Monday, when Justice Durno finished reading that sentence, Amara stood up and asked to speak again. “Everyone of those promises I made, I will still try my best to do,” he said. Minutes later, as police escorted him out of the courtroom through a side door, he blew a kiss to his wife and placed his hand on his heart.

None of his relatives spoke to reporters after the hearing, but Amara’s lawyer said that although his client is “obviously disappointed” by the decision, he accepts it. “As he said, he deserves everyone’s contempt,” Michael Lacy said. “Rather than trying to fuel and further the ideology—holding himself out as a martyr or a hero to like-minded terrorists—he didn’t do that. He did the opposite. He denounced what he did and he denounced the underlying ideology that fuels all terrorists. To me, that’s significant. That’s what the public should take away.”

Lacy had asked for a sentence between 18 and 20 years, ensuring that his client would have a definite end date to look forward to. Instead, Justice Durno left Amara’s future in the hands of the National Parole Board. “He is a young man with some community support,” Durno said. “That he has that support will no doubt be considered by the Parole Board, as will the fact that he pled guilty, accepting full responsibility for the offences. Should he bring the determination he had in pursuing the terrorist activities and objectives to his rehabilitation, he has the capacity to be rehabilitated. Zakaria Amara asked me not to close the door. While I have concluded that the only fit sentence is one of life imprisonment, I do not regard the door as permanently closed.”

Amara, a native of Jordan who lived in Saudi Arabia and Cyprus before moving to Ontario at the age of 13, was not the only “Toronto 18” suspect sentenced on Monday. In the morning, Justice Durno slapped one of Amara’s obedient underlings, Saad Gaya, with a 12-year prison sentence. An honours student at McMaster University when he was arrested, Gaya was caught unloading what he thought was three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, the same explosive fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombings. Minus credit for time already served, Gaya’s sentence is actually four-and-a-half years, which means he could be paroled as early as 2011.

Although 18 suspects were rounded up in the sensational raids of June 2, 2006, only four were accused of specifically plotting to bomb targets in southern Ontario (the other 14, though charged with terrorism crimes, were not part of the bombing conspiracy). Amara was the undisputed front man. He built a remote-controlled detonator, became obsessed with acquiring explosive chemicals, and bragged that his plan of attack is “gonna be kicking ass like never before.” Among the piles of evidence seized by police was a video of Amara testing his homemade detonator, the red and black wires just inches from some of his daughter’s baby toys. “What this case revealed was spine-chilling,” Durno said. “The potential for loss of life existed on a scale never before seen in Canada. It was almost unthinkable.”

Amara’s journey to this point—flanked by uniformed police officers, listening to a judge decide his fate—is a cautionary tale for anyone who still believes that Canada is immune to terrorism, or that the case of the so-called “Toronto 18” was nothing more than a few young Muslims talking tough and firing paintball guns. “This was not a spur of the moment plan,” Durno ruled. “Given this offender’s dedication to his cause and diligence at arranging the details, there can be no legitimate suggestion that this was not the real thing. It was not a group of amateurs whose efforts were inevitably doomed to failure.”

It may have seemed that way back in December 2005, when Amara and another suspect organized the now-infamous winter “training camp” in rural Ontario, where a dozen recruits (including an undercover police agent named Mubin Shaikh) marched in the snow and watched jihad videos in between bathroom breaks at a nearby Tim Hortons. There were boastful discussions about storming Parliament Hill and planting bombs, and before the camp finished, Amara’s fellow organizer told the others that “Rome must fall.”

At the time, police considered Amara to be a “trusted lieutenant” of the other organizer, a Scarborough man who cannot be named because he still faces trial. Twice in 2005, CSIS spies showed up at Amara’s house to ask him about his friend; during the second visit, he refused to answer their questions and threatened to phone 911. Then just 20 years old, Amara was so cocky and so naïve that instead of distancing himself from other extremists, he dared CSIS to keep following him—and then videotaped their cars when they did (he also recorded a few confused motorists he mistook for surveillance officers).

But in the weeks after the camp, things began to change. With police watching his every move, Amara would transform from lieutenant to leader—and embark on a plan that, in the words of Justice Durno, “would have changed the lives of many, if not all, Canadians forever.”

His epiphany arrived on a Monday night in January 2006, when the phone rang inside the Canadian Tire kiosk. On the other end of the line was the man from Scarborough, who called to say that he had just sent some video footage of the training camp to a contact “overseas.” Amara was livid.

“My face is on it,” he said, according to police wiretaps.

“You can’t even see it, guy,” his friend answered.

“Screw you and I’m screwed now.”

Convinced that his associate was careless and unreliable (and probably a liar) Amara was determined to branch out on his own. He began using public libraries to research bomb-making chemicals. He built and perfected his detonator, which could be triggered with a simple cell phone call. And he brainstormed ways to break off ties with the Scarborough man—while at the same time making it seem as though he was no longer a threat to national security. His plan? Leave a phone message with the man, and hope the authorities were listening. “Tell him,” he told the man’s wife on March 28, “that Zakaria Amara and everybody in Mississauga, we just quit everything.”

The ruse backfired. Instead of taking Amara at his word, the RCMP ramped up its surveillance. What they saw was an ideological young man who had learned from his mistakes, a man who now realized that the best terrorist is not the one who talks jihad on the telephone and videotapes the car driving behind him. The best terrorist is the one who doesn’t act like a terrorist.

Paranoid about surveillance, Amara quietly recruited his own cell of accomplices, split them into two groups, and made sure one didn’t know what the other was doing. Saad Gaya and Saad Khalid were in charge of securing a warehouse to store the chemicals, and being there to unload the bags when the shipment arrived. They communicated with pagers and USB memory sticks—never by phone. On the other side of the circle were two other conspirators: Shareef Abdelhaleem, the man who allegedly ordered three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on Amara’s behalf, and Shaher Elsohemy, the man who took the order (and who turned out to be another undercover informant, now in the witness protection program).

Amara was merciless and meticulous. He told Gaya and Khalid to “make sure you check if you are being followed or not—all the time,” to shave their beards before the fertilizer delivery, and to seal the warehouse door with candle wax so they will know if someone sneaks inside after they leave. He mused about placing metal chips in each of his three bombs for maximum damage. After the bust, when the RCMP conducted a test run with Amara’s chemical concoction, the ensuing explosion was “equivalent to 768 kilograms of TNT,” and “would have caused catastrophic damage to a multi-story glass and steel frame building 35 metres from the bomb site, as well as killing and causing serious injury to people in the path of the blast waves and force.”

Khalid was the first of the four bomb plotters to plead guilty; he received a 14-year sentence, minus credit for time served. Gaya followed suit, and as Durno made clear in his judgment Monday morning, the Oakville, Ont., man was the lowest on the totem pole. Amara assured him “that no one would get hurt,” and that his efforts would make him a “hero in God’s eyes” while forcing the government to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan. Now 21, Gaya had no idea Amara was planning to bomb targets in downtown Toronto until after he was arrested. “Saad Gaya was not the prime mover in the plot,” Durno said. “He did not know all the details of the plan. He took detailed orders. He did not give them.”

It was Khalid, during a court appearance last fall, who first told Amara that “what we did was wrong.” At the same time, after three years in solitary confinement, Amara had recently been released into the general population at Toronto’s Don Jail, where he says fellow inmates—including a Canadian soldier who served in Afghanistan and sympathized with the suffering of Muslims in the war-torn country—challenged his extremist beliefs. “Everyone found it difficult to reconcile between my charges and my humble and kind personality, thus leading the way to many discussions about the justification of terrorist acts,” he told the judge on Friday. “At first I vigorously defended my positions, but every time I walked away I walked away with a doubt in my heart. Despite their lack of education and ‘expertise,’ their moral and logical arguments were like pick axes that chiseled away at my ideological walls.”

In October, during two meetings with a psychiatrist, Amara opened up about his mistakes. “I feel like I’ve wasted my life,” he said. “My whole life I’ve messed up.”

For Canada’s law enforcement agencies, this case was anything but messed up. Members of CSIS and the RCMP were in the courtroom to witness, first-hand, the climactic moment of what was an unprecedented investigation. So was Mubin Shaikh, one of the two paid informants who gained Amara’s trust, and was later branded a traitor by many in the Muslim community. In yet another twist, Shaher Elsohemy—the man Amara thought was his trusted fertilizer supplier—was also somewhere in the Brampton courthouse, testifying at the trial of Shareef Abdelhaleem, the fourth and only bombing suspect who is fighting the charges. Amara has not laid eyes on Elsohemy since the day he was arrested, and his guilty plea and life sentence ensures that he never will.

“In Canada, we believe we’re not immune to terrorism, and I think this case points to that,” said Superintendent Jamie Jagoe, who is in charge of the Mounties’ national security unit in Ontario. “The evidence speaks for itself. The judge’s decision will become part of the public record, and his comments are taken with the seriousness that they deserve. These were serious offences.” When asked if there are other Zakaria Amaras lurking in the shadows, Jagoe answered this way: “[We] investigate all of these threats that are out there. It is a very busy job and we take all these threats seriously and we are fortunate in Canada that not everyone of these threats are as serious as this one.”

Bomb plotter sentenced to 12 years

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:22 AM - 10 Comments

A McMaster University honours student who participated in a terrorist bomb plot—and was arrested while unpacking a truckload of what he believed was explosive fertilizer—could be released on parole by the end of 2011.

Saad Gaya was slapped with a 12-year prison sentence this morning, but Justice Bruce Durno also ruled that the confessed terrorist deserves seven-and-a-half years credit for the three-and-a-half years he spent in pre-sentence custody—which leaves four-and-a-half years left to serve. The decision means Gaya can apply for parole in approximately 18 months, after completing just one-third of his sentence. The ultimate decision will rest with the National Parole Board.

A member of the so-called “Toronto 18,” Gaya was among the four core suspects who conspired to set off explosives in southern Ontario in retaliation for Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan. Of the four, Gaya was clearly the lowest on the totem pole. He took orders from the admitted ringleader, was assured “no one would get hurt,” and was told their target would be some sort of military facility. It wasn’t until after his arrest that he learned his accomplices had decided on two other targets: the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Toronto headquarters of CSIS, Canada’s spy agency.

Continue…

“There will be blood, glass and debris everywhere”

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 9:57 PM - 4 Comments

For a man who insists he is innocent, Shareef Abdelhaleem sure spent a lot of time worrying about police surveillance teams. The accused Canadian terrorist was so afraid of being photographed by CSIS and the RCMP that he grew increasingly paranoid about meeting in certain places or being seen with certain people, especially outdoors. Three weeks before being rounded up as part of the “Toronto 18”, he asked Zakaria Amara—the group’s confessed ringleader—whether he thought the authorities were watching him. “No,” he assured him. “Not anymore.”

The irony, of course, is that Abdelhaleem’s every word—including that chat with Amara—was being secretly recorded by the very investigators he was desperate to dodge. As he now painfully realizes, anti-terror cops used at least two tiny microphones to capture his conversations: one inside the Canadian Tire gas station where Amara worked, and another hidden somewhere on the body of a police informant named Shaher Elsohemy. In other words, whenever Abdelhaleem mused about whether police were watching him, he was speaking directly to them.

Abdelhaleem’s stress level about being caught fluctuated depending on the day, says Elsohemy, who is now testifying at the criminal trial of his old “friend.” On May 15, 2006, for example, Abdelhaleem told the RCMP’s undercover asset that “he does not believe authorities know anything about this plot.” Three days later, though, he said a CSIS spy followed he and Amara as they drove around Mississauga. “He told me they went after [the CSIS agent] and tried to check him out,” Elsohemy testified on Wednesday. “They videotaped him, too. Mr. Abdelhaleem believed his picture was taken, too.”

Now 34, Abdelhaleem is charged with participating in a now-infamous terrorist plot to detonate truck bombs at three locations in southern Ontario, including the Toronto Stock Exchange. Although 18 suspects were rounded up in the sensational raids of June 2, 2006, only four were accused of actually participating in the bomb conspiracy. Three of those men, including the mastermind Amara, have since pleaded guilty, but Abdelhaleem has chosen to fight the charges in court. He denies any involvement, and claims that the RCMP’s prized informant cannot be believed because he was paid $4 million for his covert services.

Despite the other confessions, Abdelhaleem is considered innocent until proven guilty. However, in order to walk away a free man, he must convince a judge that he was oblivious to a murderous plot that clearly unfolded right under his nose—and, as the wiretaps reveal, he spent hours talking about.

“He described it as ‘the perfect crime,’ ” said Elsohemy, answering questions from the prosecution. “He said this plot will screw Stephen Harper, the government and the military, and might lead to Canada puling its troops out of Afghanistan because they are not tough like the British and the Americans.”

A former Air Canada flight attendant with a university degree in agricultural engineering, Elsohemy infiltrated the group by “dangling” his ability to acquire large quantities of explosive fertilizer from his “uncle’s” company. Amara, who had already built and perfected a cell phone-controlled detonator, trusted Elsohemy enough to place a $5,500 order for three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, the missing component of his would-be bombs.

According to Elsohemy, Abdelhaleem was Amara’s loyal deputy—the buffer between the ringleader and his newfound chemical supplier. It was Abdelhaleem, Elsohemy said, who placed Amara’s order, delivered envelopes full of cash, and boasted that their attack would “shut down” the entire country.

Testifying for the third consecutive day, Elsohemy said Abdelhaleem was obsessed with every aspect of the plot, from how to store the fertilizer to how to profit from the explosion. “Shareef went to a library and checked the stock market situation after Sept. 11th,” he testified. “He said our money could be increased seven times.”

In one breath, Abdelhaleem talked about fleeing the country 15 days before the attack (perhaps to his sister’s house in Cleveland) in order to avoid suspicion. In the next, he talked about being sentenced to ten years at Kingston Penitentiary, “where he will be considered a leader” by other Muslim inmates. “He also explained to me that when he thinks about being arrested, it is only after the fact, after the bombings,” said Elsohemy, a stocky, well-spoken man with a bald head and a pair of glasses. “He never imagined that the arrests would happen before the bombs were detonated.”

As for those bombs, Elsohemy said Abdelhaleem relished in the carnage they would cause. One of the three selected targets, the CSIS headquarters in downtown Toronto, “will be affected from the main floor to the top floor,” Abdelhaleem said. “There will be blood, glass and debris everywhere.” In his words, the attack will be dubbed “The Battle of Toronto.”
But of all the tough talking he did in the weeks leading up to the arrests, surveillance was a recurring theme. According to Elsohemy, Abdelhaleem believed that because he was in charge of purchasing the ammonium nitrate—and not driving one of the three truck bombs—he could be not convicted of a serious offence. “He said he will probably be charged with assisting, but not performing,” said Elsohemy, who has yet to be cross-examined. “In his opinion, as he described it to me, he thought there was a difference between assisting and performing. If he didn’t drive the truck, that was not performing.”

In some ways, it’s hard to blame Abdelhaleem for his flawed logic. Determined to keep his plot a secret, Amara didn’t share every aspect with every accomplice. Two of his underlings—Saad Khalid and Saad Gaya—were tasked with renting a storage facility and unloading the delivery of ammonium nitrate. Two others—Abdelhaleem (allegedly) and Elsohemy—were in charge of securing the chemicals. The parallel groups never crossed paths. In fact, Abdelhaleem did not even meet his two Saads until they were arrested and thrown in the same prison wing.

Which is exactly the way Abdelhaleem preferred it, Elsohemy said. In the days before the bust, Elsohemy began to press Amara for more details. He wanted to know how the detonators worked, how many people were involved in the plot, and when the event would occur. When Amara suggested that the three of them meet at a Toronto park to discuss specifics, Abdelhaleem refused. He didn’t want to draw any further attention to himself, Elsohemy said, and he questioned his friend for wanting to know so much. “It’s better not to know,” he said, according to Elsohemy. “If you are arrested and you go under a lie detector test, if you don’t know something, you don’t know it.” Translation: Abdelhaleem was more than happy to be a naïve accomplice, because the consequences were far less severe.

Instead of a meeting, Amara suggested that Elsohemy record his questions on a USB memory stick and hand it to Abdelhaleem. Again, Abdelhaleem was furious. “You shouldn’t ask questions about things that don’t involve you.” But Abdelhaleem did as he was told, Elsohemy said. He delivered the USB stick to Amara.

On March 26, one week before Elsohemy and his entire family vanished into the witness protection program, he met the ringleader at the Café de Khan restaurant in Mississauga, in the same strip mall as the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre, the mosque where they attended Friday prayers. Amara handed him a USB stick. It included an audio message with answers to all of Elsohemy’s questions, and a short video depicting his homemade detonator in action (on the carpet of Amara’s living room, surrounded by his daughter’s toys).

Later that day, Elsohemy drove to an RCMP safe house and handed the memory stick to investigators. Played in court on Wednesday, Amara’s message assures Elsohemy that “nobody even knows you exist”—except two people. Amara. And Shareef Abdelhaleem.

The informant is back on the stand Friday morning.

Juggling chainsaws (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

A reader points out that Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie first reassessed the readiness of Canada’s military in July.

'A negotiated release of the hostages was preferable to just about every other conceivable option'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 2:10 AM - 59 Comments

With confirmation that four al-Qaeda prisoners and several million dollars were exchanged for Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, here again is the transcript from the Prime Minister’s press conference on the afternoon of April 22, announcing Fowler and Guay’s release.

Continue…

To the highest court it goes

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 4, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 34 Comments

The Supreme Court will hear the government’s appeal of the Federal Court’s ruling on Omar Khadr. The official statement:

Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr (F.C.) (Civil) (By Leave) (33289)

(The application for leave to appeal and the motion to stay the order of the Federal Court of Appeal and to expedite the hearing of the appeal are granted without costs. The appeal is to be heard on November 13, 2009, and the schedule for serving and filing the material and any application for leave to intervene shall be set by the Registrar.)

'A regrettable use'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 31, 2009 at 12:16 PM - 16 Comments

Foreign Affairs objects to the CIA’s use of Transport Canada research in designing interrogation methods.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs department says it’s aware of reports that Transport Canada material has been used by the CIA. ”This is a regrettable use of a publicly available document intended to save lives,” the department said in a statement to CBC News.

Mind you, the Canadian government’s official position is—or at least was, at last check—that the United States did not participate in torture.

The many implications of Omar Khadr

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 1:10 PM - 55 Comments

Tonda MacCharles tries to read Stephen Harper’s mind.

Even some Conservatives privately admit they have been taken aback by Harper’s utter indifference to pleas about Khadr’s plight. There’s no clear explanation for it. Is it good foreign policy? Good politics? Or simple ideological stubborness?

There are hints, but no explicit statements, that the Americans still want to prosecute Khadr. The government denies any knowledge of the Obama administration’s plans for the only Westerner left in Guantanamo….

The Khadrs carry political baggage here. Harper may simply want to avoid getting stung the way former prime minister Jean Chretien was. Chretien in 1996 asked Pakistani authorities to release Ahmed Said Khadr, Omar’s father, who later turned out key to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda fundraising efforts in Afghanistan. Photos of him at the hospitalized Khadr’s bedside loom large still.

It could be that Harper, having given up so much conservative political ground on fiscal and social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, does not want to risk further angering his base of supporters by appearing to be anything less than “tough on terror.”

'Restate our position'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:48 AM - 10 Comments

Paul Koring delves deeper into the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

The Harper government was warned shortly after it came to office in 2006 that Sudan’s notorious military intelligence agency was ready to “disappear” Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, unless Ottawa allowed him to go home, The Globe and Mail has learned. Sudan wanted to “deal with this case for once and for all: we judge as significant their verbal reference to a ‘permanent solution,’” Ottawa was bluntly told by Canadian diplomats in the Sudanese capital, according to documents now in possession of The Globe.

Instead of protesting the threat or warning Sudan – a regime notorious for its human rights abuses – that Ottawa would hold it responsible if harm came to a Canadian citizen held in one of its prisons, diplomats in Khartoum were ordered by a senior Canadian intelligence official to deliver a non-committal response “notwithstanding the expected displeasure of the Sudanese.”

'I can't point to any risks'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 9:23 PM - 12 Comments

An odd start to the government’s appeal of the federal court order to seek Omar Khadr’s repatriation. More from the Star and Globe.

Indefatigable in the cause of justice

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 19, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 10 Comments

Glen Pearson salutes Paul Dewar.

But the one person who stuck on this file and deserves full praise for the victory yesterday was the NDP’s Paul Dewar. Simply put, I found him indefatigable in the cause of justice for Abdelrazik. And I speak from personal experience, as we both sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee.  Against all odds, Dewar exhausted every parliamentarian option, time after time, not just in an attempt to exonerate an innocent citizen, but to prove that the Canadian parliament could be relevant in such a case. I watched as the government members of the committee fought him vociferously. But he worked the system  - very well. In key votes on the case, the three opposition parties worked together and won by one vote each time, Paul’s example being the key cause. I witnessed the discouragement on his face every time as the government refused to abide by the will of the committee on this. I would even text him on his Blackberry during committee in an attempt to keep him assured.  The hardest day came only three weeks ago, when the Foreign Affairs Minister pointed his finger in anger at Dewar over the issue, in a manner that was beneath the conduct of someone in such an exalted position.

The unanswered questions

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:46 PM - 16 Comments

Awhile after the Justice Minister’s unexpected announcement, Paul Dewar stood and asked if Stockwell Day or Vic Toews had, in their previous portfolios, received a request from the U.S. ambassador or the White House that Abousfian Abdelrazik be prevented from returning to Canada.

This would seem to be what prompted that question.