Ottawa Days of Action to End Canadian Involvement in Torture, October 24-26

Join the CSI: Ottawa Days of Action to End Canadian Involvement in
Torture, October 24-26
We Cannot Let Canadian Individuals and Institutions Get Away With
Torture

In addition to many reasons already listed (see http://
homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/2011/09/csi-ottawa-ending-canadian-
involvement.html ), here’s three more good reasons to join us:

1. CSIS and the RCMP, which were found to be complicit in the torture
of Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar, Ahmad El Maati, and
Muayyed Nureddin while all were detained in Syria, have been silent
on their ongoing relationship with Syrian Military Intelligence,
which regularly engages in torture and is complicit in the mass
detentions and horrific acts of torture and murder that have been
taking place for years and which have intensified during 2011 in
response to demands for democracy.

Leading up to CSI Ottawa and during those three days, we will seek a
public statement from both agencies that they have (or will
immediately) break all ties with Syrian Military Intelligence and
that they will apologize for their past relationship with such a
blood-stained agency (as well as to those tortured with Canadian
complicity).

2. A Libyan-Canadian citizen who was imprisoned and tortured for
eight years by the Gaddafi regime says that agents from the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) were among foreign agents who
interrogated him. Documents confirming this were found by members of
Human Rights Watch. See http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/28/canada-
intelligence-service-accused-libya-interrogations

This is of course a common practice that CSIS will partner with
brutal, torturing regimes such as Syria, Egypt, and Libya and then
claim that they “did not know” or “did not have available to them”
publicly available reports of systematic torture.

3. On 18 October 2008, Ivan Apaolaza Sancho was deported from Canada
by special charter flight, manacled hand and foot, and handed over to
authorities in Spain. The deportation was a bitter ending to a
fifteen month campaign in which the Basque man was imprisoned in
Montreal, denied the right to apply for refugee status, and
eventually deported – all on the basis of information that a Canadian
tribunal recognized was obtained under torture.

Members of the Caravan to End Canadian Involvement in Torture raised
Ivan’s case across the province in 2008. Now, he faces a trial after
three years of detention in Spain, and could be jailed for 30 years.
More at http://www.peoplescommission.org/en/sancho/

A CULTURE OF IMPUNITY
The culture of impunity around Canadian involvement in torture is
widespread. Officials in numerous government agencies complicit in
the torture of Canadian citizens, refugees and permanent residents
continue to proceed with the dangerous assumption that when it comes
to torture, whether “direct or indirect,” they can get away with it.
While Canadians were rightly upset that the government did not arrest
visiting individuals who are proudly complicit in torture (such as
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush), we also need to focus on the fact
that officials here in Canada continue to engage in policies and
decisions which result in the most unimaginable of human rights abuses.

CSI Ottawa is an attempt to remind the public, and the government,
that they cannot get away with their involvement in torture, and that
our exercise of direct democracy and seeking accountability will not
end until permanent changes are made.

Join CSI Ottawa: Ending Canadian Involvement in Torture
Organized by Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, a wholly realized
subsidiary of the Homes not Bombs network, tasc@web.ca

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