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Maher
Arar | Stephen Williams
2003 | Stephen Williams
2005 |
Juliet O'Neill
- Photo:
Chris Mikula, CanWest News Service
-
- Sealing documents on
RCMP raid ruled 'unjustifiable'
Judge finds case involving Citizen
reporter violated free press guarantee
Ian MacLeod, CanWest News
Service, November 13, 2004
OTTAWA - Court orders sealing
the detailed reasons for national security raids against the
Ottawa Citizen and reporter Juliet O'Neill violated the constitutional
guarantees of a free press, freedom of expression and the public's
right to an open court system, a judge ruled yesterday.
Ontario Superior Court Judge
Lynn Ratushny said an Ottawa justice of the peace was wrong when
he hastily agreed to an RCMP request to keep secret the reasons
for Jan. 21, 2004, police raids on Ms. O'Neill's Ottawa home
and the Citizen's downtown office to execute search warrants
under the Security of Information Act.
The RCMP were conducting a
criminal investigation into the identity of a source who allegedly
leaked classified documents to Ms. O'Neill from Canada's security
dossier on Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian deported by the
United States to Syria, where he was imprisoned and, he claims,
tortured.
Judge Ratushny quashed the
"sealing" orders and ruled that some of the secret
information be disclosed to lawyers for Ms. O'Neill and the newspaper,
who are in a protracted legal battle to have the the search warrants
declared invalid and have items seized from Ms. O'Neill returned.
In her decision, the judge
said the RCMP and Justice of the Peace Richard Sculthorpe committed
significant failings in their handling of the sealing orders.
"The sealing orders limited
the applicants' charter rights, including the fundamental right
of freedom of expression and freedom of the press," Judge
Ratushny wrote in a 24-page decision. "They limited the
public's right of access to our court system. They limited these
fundamental rights in both an unauthorized and unjustifiable
way."
Citizen lawyer Richard Dearden
said "the decision strongly affirms that freedom of the
press and open courts actually matter in this country."
On Nov. 8, the Citizen published
a front-page story by Ms. O'Neill about the RCMP investigation
of Mr. Arar, who came to their attention during a probe into
an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist logistical support group in Ottawa.
Two months later, the RCMP
executed search warrants in raids on the newspaper's office and
Ms. O'Neill's home, seizing notebooks, files, computer hard drives
and other materials.
The RCMP and federal justice
officials have 12 days to appeal the ruling.
© National Post 2004
MPs to review anti terrorism
law used to raid journalist's home
Jim Bronskill, Canadian
Press, January 28, 2004
OTTAWA -A parliamentary committee
will review a much-criticized section of the anti-terrorism law
the RCMP used to search a journalist's home.
Public Safety Minister Anne
McLellan announced Wednesday that a new national security committee
of parliamentarians will examine Section 4 of the Security of
Information Act.
The law was passed following
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States as part of the
omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act.
RCMP officers cited the security
law last week in searching the home and office of Ottawa Citizen
reporter Juliet O'Neill.
The Mounties were seeking the
source of an information leak behind a November story O'Neill
wrote about Maher Arar, an Ottawa man who was arrested by U.S.
authorities and deported to Syria.
McLellan also announced a full
public inquiry into the Arar affair.
 The
government signalled its intention last month to create a new
national security committee whose members will be sworn in as
privy councillors so that they can have access to sensitive materials.
The government will also offer
to swear in opposition party leaders in the Commons as privy
councillors, enabling them to see the results of the Arar review,
including classified portions, McLellan said Wednesday.
Section 4 of the Security of
Information Act was modelled on provisions of the former Official
Secrets Act, which had been widely criticized for decades as
poorly drafted, vague and likely unconstitutional.
The Anti-Terrorism Act, including
the security of information law, was passed swiftly without proper
scrutiny after the terrorist attacks on the U.S., said Stuart
Farson, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University in British
Columbia.
"It's a big warning for
Parliament to be much more careful what goes through when it's
under pressure.''
© Canadian Press 2004
RCMP raids home of
Citizen reporter
CBC, Jan 21 2004
OTTAWA -The RCMP raided the
home and office of an Ottawa Citizen journalist Wednesday morning.
Police say reporter Juliet
O'Neill possesses leaked documents related to Maher Arar, who
was deported by the United States to Syria where he was imprisoned
and tortured before being returned to Ottawa.
At 8 a.m., RCMP officers with
search warrants showed up at the reporter's home, and at the
office she uses at Ottawa city hall.
They taped off both places
as crime scenes.
They told the newspaper's editor-in-chief,
Scott Anderson, they intend to charge O'Neill under the Security
of Information Act.
Anderson says the new act makes
it illegal to receive or possess secret documents. He says his
lawyers are scrambling to learn more about the act-and to get
O'Neill a defence lawyer.
The police raids are chilling
for journalists, Anderson says, and dangerous to Canadian democracy.
"A major part of a democracy
is a free press. A press that's able to report without being
handcuffed by the government. And that's exactly what's happening
here," Anderson says. "This is a star-chamber mentality
that's creeping into the justice system, and it's all suspect."
So far there are no charges
against O'Neill.
An RCMP spokesperson say the
raids are part of a criminal investigation. He says the force
is looking for information on how the documents ended up in a
journalist's hands.
The raids come just as Arar,
a Canadian citizen who says he was tortured after being deported
to a Syrian prison by the United States, is set to launch a lawsuit
against American officials.
Arar and his lawyers from the
New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights are expected
to announce details about the lawsuit to be filed on Thursday
at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft is among the American officials expected to be named
in the lawsuit.
U.S. authorities detained Arar
at Kennedy airport in New York in September 2002, while he was
on a flight back to Canada from Tunisia.
He was accused of having ties
to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and deported to Syria,
the country where he was born.
The Canadian government announced
earlier this month it would investigate leaks by unnamed government
officials who alleged Arar trained at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan.
But the government has rejected
calls for a public inquiry into his deportation.
Copyright © 2004 Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
Abid Ullah
Jan, the author of " A War on Islam? ," is a regular
contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN) . His latest book,
"The End of Democracy" is now available here .<
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4277/ >
Send feedback
The choice is up to Canada
by Abid Ullah Jan (Saturday
24 January 2004)
"Arrests, detentions,
secret trials and deportations have been the hallmarks since
9/11 in Canada. Protests continued throughout 2003 against the
draconian security certificate that can land anyone behind bars
without any evidence."
The sad reality of our age
is that under the influence of the US, its allies are no more
equal partners any more. They are dictation-takers to diktat
their own citizens for the "security" and pleasure
of the US.
Partly unknowingly, but mostly
under immense pressure, all American allies are inching toward
becoming dictatorships no different than that in Egypt or Pakistan.
The obsession with American
security is also leading countries, such as Canada - so far upholding
the finest values of human rights and liberty - into becoming
dictatorship-lite.
Unlike many Canadians, those
who have tasted repression elsewhere can feel the rising chill
in Canadian air with each passing day.
Arrests, detentions, secret
trials and deportations have been the hallmarks since 9/11 in
Canada. Protests continued throughout 2003 against the draconian
security certificate that can land anyone behind bars without
any evidence.
Last week the the most depressing
week for Canada from the perspective of human liberties and public
right to information. Imagine Calgary Herald giving Canadians
the news early in the morning: "Canada OK'd deporting Arar
[a Canadian citizen]." [1] Imagine their receiving another
report two hours later, telling them Royal Canadian Mounted Police
raided a journalist Juliet O'Neil's offices "in response
to her November 8 article about the Maher Arar case."
Then think of the Canadians
receiving the news the same day that Canada Customs officers
are joining their U.S. counterparts in the coding of international
passengers arriving at airports nationwide for security checks.
Customs agents will be assigning passengers numbers from one
to 10 based on the security threat they pose.[2]
Imagine calls for a public
inquiry into Arar's case - the reality of which is already public
with RCMP's raid on a journalist's offices and home. Latest report
by CBC's 60 Minutes II has confirmed the earlier speculations
that the Canadian intelligence quietly approved of the United
States' decision to arrest and deport Syrian-born Canadian Maher
Arar to Syria. What else could a public inquiry dig out?
On the other hand, in O'Neill's
case, the RCMP is reportedly attempting to identify the RCMP
source that leaked information to O'Neill. The principle at work
seems to be: forget the violation and culprits, catch the person
who helped the truth reach the public.
Bob Carty, Board member of
Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression (CJFE) believes
that police raid on O'Neill's offices is "an extremely invasive
action" and "an affront to every journalist's right
to practice his or her profession." [3]
Bob Carty believes journalists
"should not be faced with criminal prosecution for doing
their jobs." However, it is important to note that this
principle does not hold water in the unfolding police world environment
where obsession with the US "security" reigns supreme
over the principles of journalism, justice, human rights and
liberty.
Mr. Arar's case and the related
excesses on the part of Canadian government are only signs of
what Canada would become in a few years time. Holding a full-scale
public inquiry would reveal nothing more than what has already
been revealed. [4]
This is time to focus on the
road that leads Canada to the club of most repressive regimes
under the influence and auspices of the United States.
Forget the speeches of political
leaders full of empty promises, forget the media platitudes and
ersatz adulations, forget wishful thinking of living in a free
world. If you want to know the real state of Canada in a few
years time, take a good look at the source of its inspiration
and influence - the USA.
Signs of the most dangerous
trends in the making are: Watching Canadian soldiers leaving
for consolidating occupations; listening to CBC reporting soldiers
returning from assistance in occupation as coming home from "tour"
in Afghanistan; taking humiliation, arrests and deportations
of Canadian citizens by the US for granted, and accepting raids
on offices of journalists as a routine .
To see consequences of acquiescing
to such trends, one has to look at what has become of the United
States.
See the curse of racism well
accepted in the name of racial profiling in the US. See the millions
of unemployed, many with advanced college degrees. See the high-paying
jobs flowing to other countries. See the dollar in decline and
nothing left to arrest the fall. See corporate executives looting
their own companies and then walking free. See the schools that
lack basic supplies. See the closed emergency rooms. See the
rolling blackouts.
See the defense budget bloat
to half a trillion dollars. See the billions in tax dollars pouring
out to puppet regimes. See the American women and children sleeping
in alleys and eating out of trash dumpsters. See the closed factories,
the rusted foundries, and the abandoned mills. See the poverty
and starvation.
And above all see the growing
evidence of government's complicity in the terrorist attacks
on the US. Closing eyes to the mounting evidence that no terrorist
organization could carryout 9/11 without a high-level support
from within the US will keep on forcing Canada and other countries
into making strategic blunders after blunder.
Unless approved on high level
from within, no terrorist act can ever be carried out in the
kind of state that the US has become. Canada or any another country
must not exchange their values and freedoms for the exaggerated
security threats to the US.
Canadians must not forget to
see that no one looks up to the US as a bastion of freedom, law,
and democracy any more. No one look upon the United States as
a moral leader any more.
Before sacrificing further
liberties of its citizen, Canadian government must look at the
state of affairs in the US and see its future in blindly following
its leads.[5]
The choice is up to Canada
to remain Canada - land of the free, or become a mini-United
States.
Notes:
[1]. Robert Fife, "Canada
OK'd deporting Arar, reports U.S. TV," CanWest News Services.
Canada Post, Thursday, January 22, 2004 http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=14F49C7F-E3E9-452C
-B18E-98C1B4E4BADC
[2]. TOM GODFREY, "Custom
coding in plane travel, New airport security," TORONTO SUN,
January 22, 2004
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/01/22/
320583.html
[3]. OLIVER MOORE, "RCMP
raid reporter's home," Globe and Mail, January 21, 2004
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20040121. wraid0121/BNStory/Front/
[4]. KATHLEEN HARRIS AND JOHN
STEINBACHS, "Arar case targets reporter Raid on home 'smacks
of police-state mentality' SUN MEDIA, January 22, 2004. http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/
News/2004/01/22/320589.html
[5]. BOB HERBERT, "The
Other America," New York Times, January 23,
2004.
Canada's dossier on Maher
Arar
Saturday,
November 08, 2003
The existence
of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to al-Qaeda is at
the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.
The Citizen's Juliet O'Neill reports.
There is said to be a sign
in an office at the RCMP that reads like this: "Beware rogue
elephants -- The Easter Bunny."
It's a half-joking reference
to "rogue elements" of the RCMP that Solicitor General
Wayne Easter has said may have passed information about Maher
Arar to authorities in the United States, from which he was deported
to Syria last year.
The other half of the joke
is no joke at all. The RCMP -- not rogue elements, but workaday
investigators -- had caught Mr. Arar in their sights while investigating
the activities of members of an alleged al-Qaeda logistical support
group in Ottawa. RCMP watchers were suspicious when they saw
Mr. Arar and their main target, Abdullah Almalki, talking outside
in the pouring rain away from eavesdroppers.
It is the existence of that
now-disbanded alleged group, most if not all of whose members,
including Mr. Almalki, are now in prison abroad, that a security
source cites as the root of why the Canadian government is so
fiercely opposed to a public inquiry into the case of Mr. Arar.
And it was in defence of their
investigative work -- against suggestions that the RCMP and the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, had either bungled Mr.
Arar's case or, worse, purposefully sent an innocent man to be
tortured in Syria --that securityofficials leaked allegations
against him in the weeks leading to his return to Canada.
One of the leaked documents
is about what Mr. Arar allegedly told Syrian military intelligence
officials during the first few weeks of his incarceration.
It contains minute details
of seven months of supposed training at the Khalden camp in Afghanistan
by the Mujahadeen in 1993. It alleges he was trained in small
arms use and military tactics and names specific instructors.
It even contains a code name he is said to have confessed to:
Abu Dujan, after a legendary Muslim fighter who was recognized
by a red headband that signalled a determination to fight to
the death for the prophet Muhammad.
Mr. Arar says he confessed
to training in Afghanistan when he was tortured, agreeing to
an Afghan camp name at random. He had never been in or near Afghanistan.
The document also tells of
a purported trip by Mr. Arar to neighbouring Pakistan while en
route to the Mujahadeen camp. It says he went at the behest of
Montreal members of a group named the Pakistani Jamaat Tabligh,
described as an Islamic missionary organization not know to be
involved in acts of violence or terrorism. It said he had been
assigned in the early 1990s, while studying at McGill University,
to recruit followers for the Jihad.
There was nothing in the document
about any terrorist activities in Ottawa or anywhere else. It
gave an account of his work record, including his salary at one
company, and said his lawyer had told the RCMP he would speak
with them when he returned from a trip to Tunisia in January,
2002, but there had been no further contact from the RCMP.
The document said Mr. Arar
had told U.S. interrogators in New York City that he had travelled
to Pakistan with the Tabligh group, but he denied going to Afghanistan
and that he first met Mr. Almalki at a family gathering. He allegedly
told the American interrogators that Mr. Almalki approached him
and one of his brothers in 1994 or 1995 with a proposition for
a joint business venture in the communications/computing field
in Ottawa. But the brothers decided against it because conditions
in Ottawa were too competitive.
One of Mr. Almalki's brother's
had told Mr. Arar in 1998 that Mr. Almaki had worked for an aid
organization in Afghanistan. The last time the brother had seen
Mr. Almalki was in October, 2001. Mr. Arar later heard from the
brother that Mr. Almalki had moved to Malaysia. (Mr. Almalki's
family says he was arrested in Syria during a visit from Malaysia.
Mr. Arar saw him in prison in Syria and said he had been tortured.)
Mr. Arar is demanding a public
inquiry into the role of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) into his deportation. He also wants to know if
Canadian officials devised the questions he was asked in the
United States and during torture sessions in Syria, says Mr.
Arar's spokeswoman, Kerry Pither. She said the questions focused
on Afghanistan and his knowledge of Mr. Almalki.
When the RCMP called on Mr.
Arar in January, 2002 -- the same month that RCMP executed a
search warrant against Mr. Almalki, seizing computers and files
and interrogating two of his brothers -- Mr. Arar was out of
the country.
He telephoned the RCMP from
Tunisia and later agreed to meet them, accompanied by his lawyer.
The RCMP never followed up, Mr. Arar says. Mr. Arar had disappeared,
says a security source -- a notion Ms. Pither says is outlandish.
Mr. Arar was in Canada for the next six months and could have
been contacted with a phone call.
When an RCMP investigator knocked
on his door a couple of weeks later, he found Mr. Arar and his
family were gone. Neighbours said he and his family had held
a garage sale, packed and moved. However, Ms. Pither says the
RCMP could have contacted Mr. Arar through his lawyer. She did
not know whether they had moved at that time.
Eight months later, while returning
to Canada from Tunisia, where Mr. Arar's family was on an extended
family visit that had begun in June, Mr. Arar was pulled aside
at New York's JFK airport, detained and then, under a deportation
order citing him as a member of a prohibited terrorist group
-- al-Qaeda -- was spirited to Syria, from where he had emigrated
when he was 17 years old.
It is the existence of a suspected
Ottawa-based al-Qaeda "cell" and what its members were
believed to be up to, that a security source cites as the root
of why the Canadian government is so fiercely opposed to a public
inquiry into the case of Mr. Arar.
Such an inquiry could open
a can of worms involving Syrian, American and Canadian investigations
into alleged terror plots in Ottawa and alleged shipments of
electronic and computer equipment to al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
Perhaps most difficult for
the government, an inquiry would present a dilemma over what
to do about suspects who have wound up in prison in their native
countries, including Mr. Almalki. If Mr. Arar has caused such
an uproar, others may do likewise.
An inquiry might also put the
spotlight on allegations of a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy and
on allegations that the plot had been abandoned in favour of
apparently easier targets -- on Parliament Hill and elsewhere
in the nation's capital.
Right suspect, wrong target
was how one source put it when the CanWest News reported last
summer on Mr. Almalki's suspected involvement in an alleged U.S.
Embassy bombing plot. The RCMP officially denied knowledge of
the plot last July, effectively shutting down the story that
stemmed from a report in the New Yorker magazine by investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh.
The story told of how after
the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, the Syrians
had emerged as one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most
effective intelligence allies in the fight against al-Qaeda,
sharing hundreds of dossiers on al-Qaeda cells throughout the
Middle East and in Arab exile communities in Europe. Syria had
accumulated much of its information, Mr. Hersh wrote, because
of al- Qaeda's ties to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic
terrorists who have been at war with the secular Syrian government
for more than two decades.
The contents of seven search
warrants issued to the RCMP by an Ontario Court of Justice judge
the day before Mr. Almalki's apartment was searched, remain sealed.
And most, if not all the targets of the RCMP investigation into
the alleged cell are said to be in prison abroad. Only Ahmed
Said Khadr, an Egyptian-Canadian, is said to be at large, possibly
in Afghanistan.
The Foreign Affairs Department
has for months had a list of seven Canadian men with alleged
links to terrorism in prison abroad. Until a few weeks ago, that
list included Mr. Arar. The seven are among the more than 3,000
Canadians in prison in foreign countries, most of them in the
U.S. and most of them on more common criminal charges, such as
possession of drugs.
Gar Pardy, the recently retired
consular affairs chief from Foreign Affairs, says the RCMP and
CSIS persistently opposed Foreign Affairs' efforts to bring Mr.
Arar's case to the prime minister for intervention.
"The RCMP and the security
people, that's where the division came down," Mr. Pardy
said in an interview. "They were saying we have our responsibilities
and we don't agree. I think it delayed our efforts to get him
out of there to some extent, although I don't think by a heck
of a lot quite frankly.
© Copyright 2004 Ottawa Citizen
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
