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When we don’t stand up for people’s rights, it ends up costing all of us
11-01-2017
“I certainly hope that people remain concerned, angry, and even outraged at these settlements because no future government should ever imagine that it’s a good idea, or an acceptable idea to allow Canadians fundamental rights to be violated. This is a lesson we must remember, and we must remind all future governments, so it doesn’t end up costing all of us collectively. When we don’t stand up for people’s rights, it ends up costing all of us.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a landmark settlement, $31.3 Million by the Canadian government to three Canadian men tortured in Syria.
Before September 11, 2001, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin along with Maher Arar would be considered among well established, well educated, law abiding, hard working, gainfully employed tax payers of Canada. But immediately after the World Trade Center collapse, all Muslims became suspects, and especially Arab Muslims were on top of the list for the Intelligence Services, CIA, CSIS, MI5, started suspecting mainly Arab Muslims and try to find connections with Osama Bin Laden/s Al-Qaeda. If they were not successful in establishing ties and connections with their target suspect, they would often create one. And if they were not able to even create one, they would simply wait and follow the person until the person was travelling. Once the person was off the Canadian soil, they would seize the individuals, and subject to the worst form torture – Rendition - the practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners.
In simple English, Hands off Torture – Subcontracting torture to a nation where the western government officials would not be subject to legal prosecution for violating domestic or international laws, or Geneva Convention. For Canadian officials, as the case of these four individuals suggest, their favourite country for rendition was Syria. As all these four individuals, once they left Canada to visit their families were rounded up and surprisingly ended up in Syria. Once in Syria these individuals were subject to torture that would compel them to admit to crimes which they’ve never even heard of.
The worst part about these individual’s subjugation to rendition was that Canadian officials did not only knew about the torture, rather they were directly involved.
“CBC News obtained exclusive access to some 18,000 pages, which showed that Canadian law enforcement officials not only knew three Canadians were being tortured in Syrian jails in a post-9/11 crackdown but also co-operated with Syrian officials in their interrogations.” And the “The files also show that a Canadian ambassador helped to deliver questions the RCMP and CSIS wanted put to the Canadians imprisoned in Syria, a country with a dismal human rights record.”
That’s correct, a Canadian “Ambassador” who supposed to be responsible for ensuring the safety and security of Canadian citizens abroad, was delivering questions on behalf of the RCMP and CSIS to those who would eventually be torturing these Canadians.
In post 9/11 era where Muslims, especially Arab men became instant targets for intelligence and law enforcement agencies as potential terrorist or sleeper cells around the world. In Canada, Abdullah Almalki, a Syrian-born graduate in electrical engineering from Carleton University with a successful electronics export business, topped the list of suspects as a “potential” procurement officer for Al-Qaeda, by the at a joint meeting between RCMP and CSIS
Almalki’s only crime, he had spent some time with the charity in Afghanistan, associated with Ahmed Said Khadr, Omer Khadr’s father and a close associate of Osama Bin Laden.
Although initially, Mr. Almalki was initially described as a “potential” procurement officer by CSIS. Once the file was assigned to the RCMP A-O Division, under the command of Insp. Michel Cabana, who is now a Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP, to investigate. “A day after that meeting, Cabana writes Almalki “is believed to be a procurement officer for Bin Laden and the El Quaida." The word "potential" disappeared,” reported CBC.
“After nearly two weeks of 24/7 surveillance of Almalki, an RCMP case officer wrote in a memo: "O Div task force are presently finding it difficult to establish anything on him other than the fact that he is an arab running around."
Despite this, “the RCMP put out a worldwide terrorist alert about Almalki to its agents and passed it along to the CIA and FBI.” And placed on a worldwide watchlist.
Mr. Almalki was arrested at Damascus airport in May 2002, when he went to visit his family.
The tales of the other two victims of rendition is not very different, and seem to follow a similar pattern, where Federal officials, RCMP, and CSIS identified “potential” terrorists and went on to try to build a case against them.
Mr. Ahmad Elmaati, a truck driver from Toronto was travelling to Damascus in fall 2001, where he was arrested at the airport.
Mr. Muayyed Nureddin, an Iraqi born principal at an Islamic School in Toronto in 2003 was visiting family in Iraq and was detained at Iraq-Syria border
Many Canadians are outraged at the amount of settlement. However, the settlement was not given to them on a silver platter. It has been 15 years, two judicial inquiries, and eight years after the House of Commons called on the government to provide compensation and a formal apology to Almalki, Elmaati and Nureddin and to do everything necessary to correct misinformation about them that may exist in records administered by national security agencies in Canada or abroad.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland issued a statement last Friday, "On behalf of the government of Canada, we wish to apologize to Mr. Almalki, Mr. Abou-Elmaati and Mr. Nureddin, and their families, for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to their detention and mistreatment abroad and any resulting harm,"
We hope that this settlement, along with other such as Maher Arar’s and Omar Khadr’s in past will serve as a deterrent to future governments and intelligence and law enforcement agencies to work within the realm of law and protect all Canadians, regardless of their race, religion, colour, creed, ethnicity and gender.
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