Tag Archives: deportation

Forgotten at Christmas … And the Rest of the Time Too

Posted on by elizabeth
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Human Rights Protest

From mississauga.com:

Mississauga’s Hassan Almrei will spend an eighth consecutive Christmas behind bars without ever being formally charged with a crime or standing trial.

Hundreds of his supporters, including jolly old St. Nick himself, reminded the federal government of that tonight when they staged a protest outside the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in Toronto.
The suspected Cooksville terrorist has been denied bail three times since his arrest at his Agnes St. apartment back in October 2001. He has been in custody since then.

Almrei is one of five Muslim foreigners held under a national security certificate that allows the Canadian government to detain them indefinitely as a threat to public safety based on secret evidence.
But, while the four other men have been released on strict conditions, Almrei remains in jail. He has even staged several hunger strikes to bring public and media attention to his case.

“Security certificates represent two-tier justice, the lowest-standard available because of the fact that those affected are refugees and permanent resident,” said Matthew Behrens of the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada organization. “We’re here tonight to remind the Canadian public, government officials, and federal court judges that secret trials and deportations to torture cannot be subject to amendments and tinkering. They must be abolished.”

Almrei is now being held at the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre.

The federal government is continuing its efforts to deport the five Muslim men. All five are scheduled to go before Federal court judges soon.

“Even though the Supreme Court of Canada declared unconstitutional the process under which he has been detained, it is a telling indication of the Canadian government’s blind obedience to the fear-mongering lies of CSIS and the RCMP that he remains behind bars,” Behrens said earlier. “All he has ever asked is for the government to charge him if there is a case to be made, or release him so he can get on with what remains of his life.”

The Syrian-born Almrei’s bid to be released received a huge boost last year when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law that has allowed federal authorities to keep him behind bars.

The country’s high court ruled the old security certificate system, used by the federal government to detain people without charging them on the basis that they’re an alleged threat to national security, violates the charter of rights.

Almrei was being detained under that process for more than five years.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, the federal government earlier this year filed an updated national security certificate against Almrei, renewing its intention to deport him from Canada over allegations he is connected to terrorists.

Under the new law, a special legal advocate can now check on the state by challenging the government’s claims that evidence must be kept secret. They also can challenge the relevance and weight of the facts.

CSIS alleges Almrei is linked to terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

Almrei said he has never had anything to do with bin Laden, and denied any links to terrorism.
In interviews with The News, Almrei has consistently expressed fear that he will be tortured if he’s sent back to his native Syria, a country with a horrid human rights record, according to Amnesty International.

Almrei admitted to training in a military camp in Afghanistan in 1991-92, but not to become a terrorist. He told the court he wanted to help Afghani refugees who were devastated by the Russian invasion.

CHEEBUS

Posted on by elizabeth
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This is an old story but unholiest shite:

The ACLU is suing the federal government and Los Angeles County on behalf of a developmentally disabled U.S. citizen wrongfully deported to Mexico. Federal immigration officials deported Peter Guzman from a Los Angeles County jail to Tijuana last May. KPBS reporter Amy Isackson has the story.

Guzman was born and raised in Lancaster, California. Last spring, he was arrested for trespassing and booked into an L.A. County jail.

Guzman’s attorney, Jim Brosnahan, says Sheriffs trolled the cells for people who looked Latino and might be in the country illegally. They mistakenly picked out Guzman, though Brosnahan says the Sheriff’s own records showed Guzman is a U.S. citizen.

Brosnahan: They took Peter, put him on a bus, sent him down to Tijuana. He had three dollars in his pocket. And he was in northern Mexico for about over 85 days.

Guzman is developmentally disabled. He has trouble remembering things, like even his own phone number.

Guzman’s family searched for him in Tijuana streets, hospitals and morgues for three months. He finally turned up at the border in Calexico.

The lawsuit seeks damages and for the court to declare Guzman’s constitutional rights were violated.

This is what immigration paranoia will do to ya.

Arar Loses Again

Posted on by elizabeth
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I’m so pissed off by this story that I can’t speak so I’m just posting the whole thing from Common Dreams:

NEW YORK – A United States appeals court decision upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit from Canadian Maher Arar essentially enables the U.S. government to send foreigners to be tortured, a lawyer with a human rights group representing Arar said Monday.

“It means that the U.S. can do to anyone what they did to Maher,” said Maria LaHood, a senior attorney with the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

“They can do it to anyone, to any foreign citizen, and use the immigration process as a guise, basically, to send someone to be tortured.”

Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian birth, was stopped by U.S. officials at JFK Airport in New York City as he returned to Canada from a holiday abroad in 2002.

Arar was labelled a member of al-Qaida and deported to his native Syria even though he was travelling on a Canadian passport and had insisted he wanted to go home to Canada.

He was eventually released without charges and he returned to Canada, where a judicial inquiry cleared him of any terrorist links and Ottawa awarded him compensation of $10.5 million.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled Monday that Arar’s claim that it was a violation of due process to send him to Syria could not be heard in federal court. The court concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security.

“It’s a quite sweeping and reprehensible opinion,” said LaHood. “It’s quite sweeping in how much deference it gives to the U.S. government.”

LaHood spoke with Arar and said he is equally taken aback by the decision.

“He was not only disappointed too, but outraged,” she said.

“He’s rightfully angered that he cannot get justice, and that not only can he not get justice, but that his being sent to torture has now been in vain because he can’t even stop the government from doing it to someone else.”

The 2-1 ruling also said that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights.

“We are deeply disappointed,” David Cole, a Center for Constitutional Rights board member, said in a statement.

“The Supreme Court earlier this month held that the Constitution protects foreign nationals held as ‘enemy combatants’ at Guantanamo, yet the Second Circuit has ruled that a Canadian changing planes at JFK has no constitutional right to object to being spirited away to Syria to be tortured.”

As a next step Arar can either ask the same three-judge panel to review their decision, ask the entire Second Circuit to review the decision, or petition the Supreme Court to review it, LaHood said.

“We haven’t decided yet what we’ll do, but we won’t let it end here,” she said.

The appeals court dismissal upholds the decision from a lower court. In February 2006, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed Arar’s lawsuit, citing national security and foreign policy considerations.

Canada & Iraq War

Posted on by elizabeth
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A US war resister living in Canada, Corey Glass, has been ordered deported.  From Alt-London:

Glass, 25, came to Canada in August 2006 after serving in Iraq as a Military Intelligence Sergeant.

“What I saw in Iraq convinced me that the war is illegal and immoral. I could not in good conscience continue to take part in it,” said Glass.

“I came here because Canada did not join the Iraq War. Also, I knew Canada had welcomed many Americans during the Vietnam War,” Glass stated.

“Corey Glass would be the first Iraq War resister to be deported from Canada. He would face imprisonment and severe penalties in the US,” said Lee Zaslofsky, coordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign and a Vietnam War resister.

“This goes against Canada’s tradition of welcoming Americans who disagree with policies like slavery and the Vietnam War.”

[…]

“We must not forget that the invasion of Iraq was a war justified only by lies, greed and stupidity for which permission was not sought nor granted to the Bush administration by the United Nations,” said Alexandre Trudeau, son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and director of the documentary film Embedded In Baghdad.

“This outlaw war has ravaged the Iraqi landscape, destroyed tens of thousands of lives and sorely sapped the American treasury all while filling the coffers of profiteers.”

“Those Americans who served in Iraq and have come to Canada to avoid being pressed into further participation in the indignities of the American occupation there are brave men and women of principle who should be given a chance to become landed in Canada. Like many Vietnam draft dodgers before them, their heightened sense of morality and truth can only be a benefit to our nation,” Trudeau concluded.

The Toronto Coalition to Stop the War is Toronto’s city-wide anti-war coalition, comprised of more than 50 labour, faith and community organizations and also a member of the Canadian Peace Alliance. http://www.nowar.ca stopthewar@sympatico.ca 416-795-5863

For more information on supporting war resisters, in Toronto, contact Lee Zaslofsky at 416-598-1222 or Michelle Robidoux at 416-856-5008

Information about Corey Glass and many of Canada’s war resisters, as well as how to help can be found at War Resisters Support

In the ’60s and ’70s, Canada welcomed young people resisting the US war in Vietnam.  Many of them chose to remain in Canada after amnesty and have enriched our communities.  But more than that, the challenge they represented to their own country and to our own, to each of us, to the democratic polity as a whole and more specifically, to our Federal Government – the response of our country to that challenge – was a catalyst in defining our country and our place on the international stage.  Times change.  More and more, it is difficult to resist the notion that we are going backwards.