OTTAWA –The Harper government must stop their ongoing complicity in human rights abuses against Omar Khadr by bringing him back to Canada, Liberal MPs said today.
“An independent report has just found that Canada’s spy agency failed to take human rights concerns into account when interrogating Mr. Khadr,” said Liberal Consular Affairs Critic Dan McTeague. “This finding strengthens the case for bringing Mr. Khadr home and calls for stronger government oversight on how CSIS conducts its business.”
SIRC, which is the oversight body that monitors the work of CSIS on behalf of Parliament, reported this week that CSIS ignored human rights concerns when interrogating Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay prison.
“SIRC has called on Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan to provide the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) with guidance and advice in this area,” said Mr. McTeague. “Given this government’s poor track record on consular cases – from Mr. Khadr, to Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan, to Mohamed Kohail in Saudi Arabia, to Ronald Smith in Montana – Canadians have little faith in the Minister’s guidance or advice.”
The report points to the widespread allegations of mistreatment and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Guantanamo and Afghanistan when CSIS interviewed Khadr in February 2003. The committee wrote that it is “incumbent upon CSIS to … meet growing and evolving expectations of how an intelligence agency should operate and perform in a contemporary democratic society” and that CSIS should receive “guidance and advice from the Minister on how to accomplish this task.”
Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae said the Harper government’s record on standing up for Canadian citizens abroad shows that they either don’t care about the expectations of a “contemporary democratic society,” or they don’t understand them.
“Whatever the case, it is unacceptable, and their complicity in human rights violations around the world must stop,” said Mr. Rae, adding that Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan’s response to the report was highly inadequate. “Our laws make it very clear how Mr. Khadr should have been treated. Clearly, there needs to be better oversight on how CSIS conducts its business overseas. And clearly he must be brought home.”
On April 23, a federal court justice ordered the Conservative government to lobby Washington to send Mr. Khadr to Canada. At the very least, the judge ruled, the government was obliged to try to protect Mr. Khadr from being unlawfully detained, from being abused by his captors, and from being locked up longer than necessary. The government didn’t waste any time filing an appeal of the decision.
In its appeal case, government lawyers recently argued that Ottawa has no obligation to even take the moderate step of raising the issue of Omar Khadr’s repatriation with American officials – a position Liberal MP Irwin Cotler said is highly disturbing.
“Omar Khadr’s detention – and the Guantanomo process to which it is intimately tied – has been decried by both the Canadian and American Supreme Courts. Nonetheless the government is choosing to abandon this Canadian citizen,” said Mr. Cotler. “The government must appreciate that it is not above the law. It has an obligation to protect the human rights of Canadians – and no decision coming from its offices can alter that reality.”
