Thursday, July 16, 2009

CSIS ignored Khadr's human rights.

It is hardly news that CSIS or RCMP intelligence ignored human rights. What would be news is if anyone were ever held responsible for it. Arar was paid millions by Canadian taxpayers for the wrongs done to him but no one in the intelligence agencies were punished. The US still considers him a member of Al Qaeda or at least that is the grounds upon which they rendered him to Syria for interrogation and torture. Arar has not even been able to get a court case off the ground in the U.S. for reasons of national security. Even Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper who are hardly left wing wackos thought the secret evidence the US revealed to them was no ground for changing their own opinions. Yet nothing happens.
Again Abdelrazik was on a no fly list at the request of the U.S. No evidence that can be revealed no evidence that could bring a charge so he just suffered in the Sudan and until Harper was forced by a court decision to allow him back to Canada.


CSIS ignored Khadr's human rights: report

CBC News
CSIS ignored human-rights concerns and did not take Omar Khadr's age into account in deciding to interview him at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, says a report from the independent committee that oversees the spy agency.

The Toronto-born Khadr, now 22, is being held at the U.S. detention centre in Cuba for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15, killing an American soldier. He is the only Western citizen still detained at Guantanamo.

A report from the security intelligence review committee (SIRC), released Wednesday in Ottawa, said documents also show Khadr's U.S. captors threatened him with rape, kept him alone and would not let him sleep. Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers questioned Khadr at Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and shared the results of their interrogations with the Americans.

However, the report did not find that CSIS was complicit in Khadr's alleged torture at the hands of U.S. interrogators.

The committee recommended that CSIS take human-rights issues into consideration in future probes and also establish a policy framework to guide its dealings with young people.

"As part of this, the service should ensure that such interactions are guided by the same principles that are entrenched in Canadian and international law," the SIRC report said.

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