Canadian imprisoned in UAE since 2014 appears to have been tortured

A Canadian businessman Salim Alaradi imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since August of 2014 appears to have been tortured. Canadian officials saw the evidence of the torture during a consular visit in January of 2015.

 

Alaradi has been imprisoned without charge in the UAE since being arrested in August of 2014. The family shared the evidence that Alaradi was tortured with Amnesty International. The evidence viewed by The Globe and Mail showed torture marks on Alaradi's body that were apparently observed and documented during the January 2014 Canadian consular visit. Alex Neve of Amnesty International said:

 “We’ve now seen evidence that makes it very clear that Salim has indeed been subjected to torture. It gives rise to a very strong indication that Canadian officials have been aware of the torture and ill treatment he’s been through since [last] January.”

The Alaradi family said consular officials did inform them about general health concerns they had about Alaradi but they made no mention of torture. While the family wished to bring the case to public attention they did not want to go into details due to fear for Alaradi's safety. There is a website on Facebook devoted to having Alaradi freed.

Alaradi has now been in custody 17 months without being charged. His family live in Windsor, Ontario. In September, they hired Ottawa lawyer Paul Champ to assist them in having Alaradi released and returned to Canada.Champ claims that the Canadian government knew that Alaradi was tortured but did not tell the family until he became involved in the case. Champ said:

"In some cases, the Department [of Foreign Affairs] will try to suggest that there's privacy issues, but this isn't the kind of information that they should be withholding, in my opinion. Although it's very difficult information, it's information that, in my opinion, a family deserves to know."

The Globe and Mail reported that a representative of the Department of Foreign Affairs acknowledged Alaradi's case but would not comment on whether the torture allegations were credible.

Alaradi was one of 10 businessmen of Libya origin who were arrested between August and September of 2014 by officers of UAE state security. The UAE is a strong supporter of the internationally-recognized House of Representatives(HoR) government in eastern Libya and of their CIA-linked armed forces commander General Khalifa Haftar. They oppose the rival government in Tripoli. The UAE may have been trying to recruit business people with connections to the Tripoli-controlled area as spies. Recently, a UAE national was arrested by the Tripoli government on charges of spying. Alaradi was not the only Canadian arrested.

Refat Hadagha, a 47-year-old former resident of Surrey, B.C. claims also to have been detained. In an interview from Istanbul Turkey by phone he said: “I don’t know why I was kidnapped, why I was tortured, why I was released.” He said judging by his own experiences Alaradi was also probably tortured.

Alaradi and his brother Mohamed ran a home-appliance business in Dubai. On being arrested they were interrogated about different Libyan political groups. The Alaradi family claims their father does not belong to any political group. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Forced Disappearance has asked to visit Libyan detainees and investigate accusations of torture.

Alaradi's brother Mohamed along with Hadagha and 2 others began to speak out about their mistreatment after they were arbitrarily released from Abu Dhabi prison. They were released and deported to Turkey without any explanation in December of 2014. Mohamed said: “I could hear my brother’s screams. UAE Security would say, ‘Do you hear these sounds? We’re beating your brother while he’s hanging from the ceiling.’”Mohamed was held in solitary confinement for months and claims he was tortured. He has been working along with his brother's family to secure Salim's freedom. Mohamed thinks that he and the others were released because their torture marks were healed and virtually disappeared.

Mohamed and three others were released and deported to Turkey for reasons unknown in December, 2014. No charges were ever laid. In an interview, Mohamed said he suspects they were released because their torture marks had healed and disappeared by that point, leaving no evidence of the abuse. Alex Neve of Amnesty International was critical of the Canadian government: “Given the amount of time that has passed and the direct information Canadian officials had, this case should have been lodged at the highest levels of the Canadian government and become a preoccupying concern for the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister."

The family lawyer, Paul Champ, said that consular visits have gone from three during the first year of Alaradi's incarceration to almost weekly since mid-October.The website of Canada's embassy to the UAE claims that Canada's excellent relations with the UAE are "founded upon substantial commercial ties and mutual goals of peace and prosperity". What's a little torture here and there compared to the importance of maintaining trade and good relations?

Conservative government allows use and sharing of information gained through torture

After earlier allowing spy agencies to use and share information obtained by torture, the Canada government has now extended the same powers to the national police force(RCMP) and federal border agents.

The Conservative government has been quietly without any notice to the public been changing the rules with respect to information that may have been tainted by torture. The Canadian Press managed to obtain documents from Sept. 9 2011 through the Access to Information Act. The documents are directives to the RCMP and the Border Services Agency. Up until now the documents have remained classified even though this is an important change in policy and one would think should have been discussed in parliament.

CBC asked the officer of the Public Safety Minister's Office about the story from the Canadian Press. CBC asked if the government would use information obtained by torture. A spokesperson for Vic Toews the minister said:. "The minister's directive is clear, the primary responsibility of Canadian security agencies is to protect Canadian life and property..At all times we abide by Canadian law." This is typical evasion but to protect Canadian life and property information which could have been obtained by torture could be used.

These new directives are almost identical to directives issued in the summer of 2011 to apply to the CSIS(Canadian Security Intelligence Service). At the time those directives were criticized by human rights advocates and also opposition MP's as a violation of Canada's obligation to prevent torture internationally.

The U.S. is well known for its former rendition policy that sent terror suspects to countries such as Syria for interrogation and where they were often tortured. The Maher Arar case is a famous instance although the U.S. claims it was not a rendition but a deportation since Arar was a dual citizen of Syria and Canada. Later when supporters of Arar were trying to have him returned to Canada classified material was leaked to a reporter.

Arar's case reached new heights of controversy after reporter Juliet O'Neill wrote an article in the Ottawa Citizen on November 8, 2003, containing information leaked to her from an unknown security source, possibly within the RCMP. The secret documents provided by her source suggested Arar was a trained member of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell.

Someone obviously knows how to use information obtained by torture. An extensive government inquiry found Arar had no links to terrorism. Arar reached a settlement with the government for over ten million dollars. Arar was deported to Syria partly on the basis of raw intelligence data much of it erroneous which the U.S concluded showed he was probably an Al Qaeda operative. One of the recommendations of the Arar Inquiry was that information never be provided to a foreign country where there is a risk that the person might be tortured. However, the U.S. already shared the same view when it deported Arar to Syria. Alberto Gonzales the U.S. attorney general at the time of the Arar deportation noted that Syria had given assurances that Arar would not be tortured. Assad was in power in Syria at that time.

Some of the information used against Arar had been obtained through torture of another terror suspect again in Syria. Canada used what I call opportunistic rendition. Instead of using the U.S. technique Canada waited until a suspect visited a country such as Syria or Egypt and then the person would be arrested. Three Canadian citizens were subject to this practice and ended up in jails in Syria and Egypt. There was a much less extensive and very restrictive inquiry into these cases by Judge Frank Iacobucci. Much of the inquiry was not open even to the lawyers for the three. The inquiry concluded:

Canadian officials had a hand in the torture of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria through the sharing of information with foreign intelligence and police agencies.

Canadian officials even helped out by providing questions to Syrian military intelligence. False confessions by El Maati were used to obtain warrants in Canada. This is the way that Canada used information obtained by torture. The three have so far not been able to receive any compensation for their ordeal.

Now the same intelligence agencies and police are given explicit permission to use such information if it is thought necessary for the security of Canadians. The UN Committee on Torture has been critical of the Canadian record. Alex Neve the general secretary of Amnesty International has summed up the main problems as follows:

..

.Canada risks complicity in torture by allowing deportation to torture, denying fair process in security-certificate cases, giving the nod to prisoner transfers in war zones when there is an obvious risk of torture and, under proposed legislation currently before Parliament, restricting appeal rights for refugee claimants who fear torture in their home countries. There is clearly complicity in the ministerial direction to CSIS allowing intelligence information to be shared with other countries even when that might cause torture, and in authorizing the use of intelligence information that was likely obtained through torture in other countries.

CSIS allowed to share information even if it could lead to torture

The Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews has given CSIS permission to share information with foreign agencies even when this could lead to torture. The four page directive to CSIS came from Toews in July 2011. The directive was secret and was just released to the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Amnest International secretary-general for Canada Alex Neve said that the directive contradicts Canada's commitments against torture. This is not likely to embarass Toews or the Conservatives. This is all for a good cause the war against terror and to keep Canadians safe. Unless that is you happen to be a wrongly accused Canadian such asMaher Arar. In that case you will be rendered to Syria or no doubt some new country now and tortured and interrogated.

CSIS can also use torture-tainted evidence if Canadian public safety is at rick. Many experts point out that under torture most people will confess to anything in order to have the torture stop. In the case of Maher Arar somehow information that only Canadian intelligence services likely had that Arar had trained in Afghan terror camps was leaked to the press. This was later shown to be obtained under torture and to be false. Nevertheless it was used to try and subvert attempts to get Arar released from a Syrian jail'

The source of the leak was never found. The investigators in Arar's case sent completely unvettted intelligence reports with much false information to their U.S. counterparts. In the U.S. Arar is still considered a member of AL Qaeda even though an expensive and extensive hearing here found him innocent of any terror connections and paid him ten million in compensation. No one was ever punished of the Canadian investigators. The operation had the patirotic name Öh Canada! NOTE: The O Canada group came from the RCMP not the CSIS).For more see this article.