Panel, dinner and strategy session to oppose a new "security certificate"

Sunday, 21 October 2007
5pm Panel with Abdullah Almalki, Adil Charkaoui, Yavar Hameed, and Dominique Peschard
7pm Free community supper
8pm Strategy session

CÉDA, 2515 Délisle St., Lionel Groulx metro

Free and fun childcare onsite (Bring Your Kids!)
Translation between English, French, and Arabic

The state kidnap and torture of Maher Arar is viewed as exceptional in
Canada.

Unfortunately it isn't.

Other Canadians have undergone the same horrific treatment, including Abullah Almalki. Refugee-claimant Benamar Benatta was illegally delivered to the Americans in 2001, and spent the next five years in prison under torture, without charge. And under such measures as the "security certificate", non-citizens like Adil Charkaoui are subject to a different process with the same outcome.

In February 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that this security certificate process was illegal. But Charkaoui and the others under "security certificates" remain in the same situation; in indefinite detention or house arrest on the basis of secret suspicions and under threat of deportation to torture. At the same time, the government has said that it will introduce new security certificate legislation. If this legislation passes, what happened to Arar and others will again be confirmed as the rule.

Come out to hear more and to strategize on how to oppose new legislation, and all that lies behind it: a culture of secrecy and fear; a hierarchy of rights; racism; expanding government powers of control and surveillance; and more!

ABDULLAH ALMALKI is a Canadian engineer who lives in Ottawa with his wife and six kids. On a visit to Syria in May 2003, he was abruptly arrested. Although never charged, he spent almost two years in Syrian prisons, where he was interrogated under physical and psychological torture with questions sent to Syria by Canadian policing and security agencies (RCMP and CSIS) and delivered to the Syrian torturers by the Canadian ambassador and consul in Syria. Stephen Toope, fact-finder for the Arar commission, wrote in his report, "Of all the testimony I heard, Mr. Almalki's revealed the most intense pain and suffering." "Mr. Almalki was especially badly treated, and for an extended period." Almalki was eventually released and returned to Canada. In Canada, he fought for a public inquiry into the role of Canadian authorities in his kidnap and torture, along with Ahmad Abou Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin. This was eventually granted, after both the UN Human Rights Committee and the Arar Commission recommended it. The Iacobucci Inquiry is currently underway, but is being conducted behind closed doors, without the presence of Almalki, Elmaati, Nureddin, or their lawyers.

ADIL CHARKAOUI is a teacher who lives in Montreal with his wife and three kids. Charkaoui immigrated to Canada with his parents and sister in 1995. In May 2003 he was arrested under a "security certificate". He spent almost two years in prison, on the basis of secret suspicions and under threat of deportation to torture. Since being released from prison he has been subject to severe, invasive control orders, which prevent him from leaving home without supervision, from using the internet and much else. He still lives under the uncertainty and threat of deportation. Charkaoui challenged the security certificate legislation all the way up to the Supreme Court. In February 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the "security certificate" was indeed unconstitutional. However, Charkaoui, along with the other security certificate victims, remains in the same situation, under a cloud of suspicions he has been given no meaningful opportunity to refute.

YAVAR HAMEED is the lawyer-founder of Hameed Farrokhzad St-Pierre Chambers. He workers primarily in the area of rights and liberties. His practice responds to the many examples of direct and indirect profiling of Arab-Muslim communities since 11 September. He works for the rights of the non-status, homeless and low-income while representing them in the context of civil recourse against police brutality. He was the Ottawa Agent of Johanne Doyon, Charkaoui's lawyer, during the appeal to the Supreme Court on the question of the constitutionality of the security certificate. He teaches part-time at Carleton University's Law Department and is regularly involved in public debate on the issues of racial profiling, the security certificate, and the Anti Terrorism Act.

DOMINIQUE PESCHARD's concern for social justice and human rights has led him to become active in the Ligue des droits et libertés, as Vice-President and member of the board of directors since 2001. As a member of the Ligue's civil rights committee, he has, among other things, drafted a position paper on the proposed national identity card that was presented to the House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and a brief on biometrics that was presented to the Commission de l'éthique de la science et de la technologie du Québec.