Our turn to face up to complicity in torture
It’s easy to criticize others’ mistakes, difficult to admit one’s own.
The recent Congressional acknowledgment of the CIA’s use of torture was widely condemned in Canada, as were earlier revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as the American use of intelligence obtained under torture by unsavory regimes.
Yet Canadian politicians and pundits are studiously avoiding the embarrassing subject of Ottawa’s continued complicity in torture, in violation of both international law and our own Criminal Code.
Stephen Harper is refusing to ratify measures to strengthen the UN Convention against Torture.
The reforms would allow international and national inspections of detention centres and help tear down the shroud of secrecy that surrounds torture in China, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and others.
The additional rules would also subject Canadian detention centres to scrutiny and expose such abuses as solitary confinement, which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has said is often torture and should never extend beyond 15 days.
“Canada’s practice in this area is of grave concern — it is used far too often and for far too long,” says Alex Neve, head of Amnesty International Canada.
Yet last week Ottawa rejected calls to limit its use for mentally ill inmates in federal prisons.
Canadian prisons have uneven oversight. The Correctional Investigator oversees federal prisons. Provincial prisons are largely left to provincial ombuds. Canada Border Services Agency and others that run their own detention centres have no oversight.
On Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, dozens of Canadian organizations called on Harper to adopt the Optional Protocol, an add-on to the 1984 torture treaty of which Canada was a strong proponent.
If he did, Canada could credibly press the worst offenders among the 141 countries that use torture. But Harper has shown little or no interest. His government is also unapologetic in permitting the use of intelligence obtained under torture abroad.
It is doing so in the name of “saving Canadian lives” — just as the Central Intelligence Agency said it was using water-boarding, “rectal feeding” and other horrible practices in order to save American lives. But the recent U.S. Senate committee report shot down that rationale, saying the CIA did not pry any information under torture that was not otherwise available.
Ethics aside, it’s now widely acknowledged that not only does torture not work, it yields bad information, sends investigators down wrong alleys and wastes valuable time. It gives your country a bad name, helps jihadists recruit more terrorists and leads to more terrorism. Torture also creates innocent victims, such as Maher Arar and others in Canada.
Two separate judicial inquiries, led by respected judges Dennis O’Connor and Frank Iacobucci, in 2006 and 2008 respectively, laid bare the dangers of accepting information obtained under torture. That led to a national consensus against the practice. Yet Harper has quietly resurrected it, without bringing the issue to Parliament, sneaking it instead through what’s known as ministerial directives.
Canada is yet to fully account for its hand in the torture of detainees during our military mission in Afghanistan.
According to Ottawa lawyer Paul Champ — retained by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association — Canada transferred more than 400 detainees to Afghan authorities.
“At least a third to a half were tortured until 2007,” he told me. From 2008 on, Canadian-transferred detainees were less likely to have been tortured, “no doubt because of the huge controversy in Canada. Still, I’d estimate that perhaps 10 per cent were tortured from 2008 and 2011.
“As well, 40 detainees captured by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and Persian Gulf were transferred to U.S. authorities between 2002 and 2006,” their fate unknown.
Canada compensated Arar who was tortured in Syria after being sent there by Americans based on false information supplied by Canada. But Ottawa is yet to offer redress to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin who were also tortured in Syria and, in the case of Elmaati, in Egypt as well. That was the finding of Justice Iacobucci.
“Ottawa should’ve moved to apologize and offer suitable redress,” says Neve. “Instead, the three have been forced into protracted, contested, mean-spirited litigation. Here we are six years later, and they’re still trapped in court proceedings that have cost taxpayers who knows how many millions of dollars.”
The process known as “security certificates,” with their Kafkaesque restrictions on individual freedom, continues. Five men were snared in it. After years of legal challenges, the certificates against only two have been withdrawn and both have launched lawsuits seeking compensation. Not only is the evidence secret, notes Neve, “information received from the CIA would almost certainly figure widely in all of the security certificate files, as would information from numerous governments that extract bad information from suspects under torture.”