Northern Life Article on Action Against Secret Trials in Canada

Group protests Canadian secret trials
Date Published | Oct. 22, 2007 | Northern Life
BY WENDY BIRD

A group of concerned Sudburians banded together on the weekend to demand an end to the so-called "national security certificate" process that allows the Canadian government “to indefinitely detain non-citizens in Canada with completely inadequate due process.”

“We are opposed to this process. We feel it should be abolished,” said Scott Neigh, a member of the group called Sudbury Against War and Occupation (SAWO).

“This is legislation that allows the federal government to possibly deport these people, even if they will be tortured (back in their homeland.)”

Neigh said there are currently five men, all of them Muslim, who are being subjected to this process in Canada.

“We feel they should either be released or, if they have done things that are violations of the criminal code, they should be charged and they should go through the same kind of trial process that other people who break the law go through in this country,” he said.

The group, which has a couple of dozen members, held a media conference in front of the Sudbury Courthouse Oct. 20. One speaker was Dr. Gary Kinsman of Laurentian University, who has written extensively on the history of the Canadian national security state and was recently awarded Laurentian University's Research Excellence Award.

Also during the media conference, a group volunteer read a statement from New Liskeard native Sophie (LaMarche) Harkat, who is married to one of the men who is currently under house arrest. Mohamed Harkat was accepted as a refugee in Canada before being arrested in December 2002. Never charged, and never given a fair trial, his certificate was upheld in 2005 under the unconstitutional security certificate process, Neigh said. Under the conditions of house arrest, Harkat is never allowed to be alone and cannot leave home without the permission of the government.

In February 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that some aspects of the security certificate process are unconstitutional and gave the government one year to change the law. The Conservative government is expected to introduce new legislation this fall. Critics charge that the changes to the legislation will likely be inadequate and will leave the unjust process largely intact.

SAWO is calling for the abolition of the security certificate process, added Neigh.

“No amount of tinkering can turn an essentially discriminatory process – one which explicitly treats the liberty of non-citizens with contempt and which is implemented in ways that target Muslim men of colour – into a fair one.

“It is a process that places arbitrary power in the hands of spy agencies and politicians, that replaces precise charges with vague concepts, that relies on secret suspicions, profiling and association instead of evidence, and that has no end except deportation to further torture. It assumes that immigrants are potential ‘threats to national security.’ It cannot be reformed and must be eliminated.”