Canada rejects evidence obtained by waterboarding

This article is from Newsweek. This is a quite important development. The cases against Harkat and Charkaoui are no doubt much weakened by throwing out this evidence. I have seen nothing about this so far in the Canadian Press. The CIA is probably not happy that their evidence is being thrown out by the CSIS.


Canada tosses CIA terror testimony obtained through waterboarding.

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 5:41 PM ET Mar 5, 2008
The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.

According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror "sleeper" operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.

The move, which so far has received no public attention, is the latest sign of potential international fallout from the CIA's recent confirmation that it waterboarded a handful of high-profile Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. The use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were approved by the Bush White House and Justice Department. Waterboarding, which critics charge is a form of torture, involves strapping a suspect to an inclined board and forcing water into his lungs, typically by pouring water through a cloth placed over his nose and mouth.

The Canadian cases involve two men: Mohammed Harkat, an Algerian native living in Ottawa, and Moroccan-born Adil Charkaoui of Montreal. Both were arrested after the September 11 terror attacks and detained without charges on suspicions of links to Al Qaeda. Unable to develop enough evidence to bring criminal charges against either man, the CSIS sought to deport them on grounds that they had both allegedly spent time in Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s. (Both men now have been released on bail but remain under government scrutiny).

At least part of the case against the Canadian suspects was derived from the CIA-supplied statements of Zubaydah, the suspected Al Qaeda logistics chief who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and became the first high-value detainee subjected to waterboarding. A Canadian government dossier filed with the courts after Harkat's arrest, for example, stated that "a foreign agency" (an apparent reference to the CIA) "advised the Service [CSIS] in March 2003 that Abu Zubaida [sic] was able to identify the respondent [Harkat] by his physical description, including that he operated a guest house in Peshawar, Pakistan in the mid 1990s for mujahadeen travelling to Chechnya."

But last month, the CSIS filed a revised version of the dossier on Harkat as part of its case to deport the suspect. The new version deleted the detailed information from "the foreign agency" about Abu Zubaydah's identification of Harkat. Instead, in the new dossier, dated Feb. 22, 2008, the CSIS said simply that, "Based on its investigation, the Service concludes that HARKAT [sic] has associated with Abu Zubaydah [sic], one of [Osama] bin Laden's top lieutenants since the early 1990s." A footnote in the dossier attributes this information to news articles from the British press and to a counter terrorism newsletter published by a Chicago think tank.

Lawyer Paul Copeland, who represents Harkat, also provided NEWSWEEK with a letter sent to him in January by John Sims, Canada's deputy Justice minister, in which the government official said he could "confirm that [in Harkat's case] the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will not rely on information provided by Mr. Zubaida [sic]." Copeland also noted that similar allegations were deleted from an official CSIS report on Adil Charkaoui.

Copeland said the Canadian government's decision to drop claims about Harkat and Charkaoui that came from the CIA's interrogations of Abu Zubaydah indicates "the government of Canada, or at least the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has concluded that everything that came from Abu Zubaydah was obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Asked why the statements from Zubaydah had been dropped from the dossiers against Harkat and Charkaoui, Bernard Beckhoff, a spokesman for Canada's public safety ministry, which oversees CSIS, said he could not comment on developments in either case because they are both still before the courts. But he then added, pointedly: "The CSIS director has stated publicly that torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable. CSIS does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture."

The CIA declined to comment on the CSIS's apparent rejection of the agency's evidence. Spokesman Paul Gimigliano told NEWSWEEK, "The agency's terrorist-detention program has been run in keeping with U.S. law. The Department of Justice deemed CIA's interrogation methods to be lawful at the time of their use."

But the development was immediately seized on by human-rights advocates as proof that the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques rejected by the rest of the world will undermine counterterrorism cases in foreign courts. "This shows how the United States is shooting itself in the foot in terrorism cases," said John Sifton, the director of One World Research, a public-interest group that investigates human-rights abuses internationally.

The Canadian action comes as controversy within the United States over waterboarding and other "aggressive" interrogation methods is escalating. At a Capitol Hill hearing last month, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden acknowledged for the first time that the CIA had used waterboarding on three Al Qaeda detainees: Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (allegedly Al Qaeda's operations chief in the Persian Gulf). American and other intelligence agencies say that Zubaydah, a longtime bin Laden lieutenant of Palestinian origin, was in charge of pre-9/11 Al Qaeda training camps and guest houses in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

All three of the waterboarded suspects were held for years by the CIA in a still-secret network of clandestine detention centers. In September 2006, President Bush ordered them and about a dozen other CIA detainees transferred to the Guantánamo detention camp. The Defense Department recently charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other men with plotting the 9/11 plot in a case that will be tried under specially set up U.S. military tribunals. The cases, for which the suspects will face the death penalty, are expected to raise a host of complex legal issues about whether the men had been subjected to mistreatment by U.S. officials. (The Justice Department recently launched a criminal investigation into reports that CIA officials destroyed videotapes of interrogations of Zubayadah and Nashiri.)

The White House and Capitol Hill continue to be at odds over the issue: Congress recently approved an intelligence authorization bill that would expressly forbid the CIA from using waterboarding and certain other interrogation methods. Although it says the U.S. government no longer engages in waterboarding, the White House has signaled President Bush will veto the measure because he does not want to tie the agency's hands in the future.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/118992© 2008

Terror suspect Harkat freed on bail

This is from the Globe and Mail. It certainly seems as if the Border Agency was just out to harass Harkat. They knew for some time that his mother-in-law no longer resided at the house where Harkat stayed with his wife. All of a sudden just before the trial they arrest Harkat while in his shower! Talk about being caught with your pants down. At least the judge didn't go along with the Border Agency.


Terror suspect Harkat freed on bail
OMAR EL AKKAD
Globe and Mail Update
February 1, 2008 at 12:53 PM EST
OTTAWA — Accused terrorist Mohamed Harkat has been released from jail, just days after Canadian Border Services Agency officials arrested and accused him of violating his strict bail conditions.
Federal Court Justice Eleanor R. Dawson allowed Mr. Harkat to return home in a ruling on Friday, saying she is “satisfied that the making of this interim order will not pose a danger to national security or to the safety of any person.”
However Mr. Harkat must remain in his Ottawa home at all times, and is only allowed to leave for medical emergencies or to attend court.
Mr. Harkat must be accompanied in the house by either his wife or his mother-in-law, Justice Dawson ruled.
“Until further order of this Court, Mr. Harkat is not to be left alone in the residence. At all times, one of Sophie Harkat or Pierrette Brunette must also be inside the residence.”
Mr. Harkat has never been charged with a crime, but he did spend four years in prison under a Canadian law that branded him a suspected al-Qaeda agent. That jail stint came to an end in June 2006, when he was released under house arrest. As part of his bail conditions, he was allowed about 12 hours a week outside the house. He was also constantly monitored – two closed-circuit cameras keep an eye on the house.
For almost two years, Mr. Harkat lived under the bail conditions without incident. However last Wednesday, CBSA agents arrested the terror suspect while he was taking a shower in his Ottawa home, alleging he breached his bail conditions.
The breach of bail accusation stemmed from Mr. Harkat's mother-in-law – one of his guardians and the owner of the Ottawa house where he and his wife Sophie live – no longer spending the night in the home because of a dispute with her own partner. Mr. Harkat's lawyers argued in court on Thursday that the allegation isn't sufficient to constitute a breach of bail conditions.
Mr. Harkat was scheduled to appear in court on Monday to argue for more leniency in his bail conditions. It appears that court appearance will now go ahead.
Mr. Harkat's court saga this week comes as the House of Commons resumes debate on Bill C-3 – designed to replace immigration security legislation the Supreme Court struck down last year – with just a few weeks to go before the old legislation essentially expires.
Last year, the Supreme Court said secret hearings in which the accused do not have access to evidence against them is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and gave the government one year to fix the law. Mr. Harkat was one of five men who brought the case before the Supreme Court last year.