"The Canadian Border Services Agency has no explicit policy governing use of evidence suspected of coming from torture."

Canadian Press, 25 March 2008

MONTREAL — A French legal expert is warning Canada it will break international law if evidence obtained through torture is used to deport a suspected Basque terrorist.

Didier Rouget, a lawyer who has represented several torture victims, suggested Thursday that Canada is walking a dangerous line if it returns Ivan Apaolaza Sancho to Spain.

Sancho was arrested on a Quebec City ferry last summer and is wanted by Spain for a series of car bombings tied to the violent Basque separatist group ETA.

Clare Dyer, February 28 2008, guardian.co.uk

Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, February 16, 2008

Months after his arrest on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, Abu Zubaydah -- a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant -- was flown to a secret CIA prison.

He was strapped to an inclined board by CIA interrogators. His mouth and nose were covered with cellophane and water was forced into his throat to simulate the terror that a drowning man experiences.

CIA director Michael Hayden admitted earlier this month that Mr. Zubaydah and two other al-Qaeda suspects were subjected to this kind of "waterboarding" in the year that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

It was necessary, he told the Senate select committee on intelligence, because U.S. officials knew little about the terrorist organization and feared another attack.

13 February 2008, JIM BRONSKILL, CP

OTTAWA -- An investigation by the watchdog over the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concludes the spy agency "uses information obtained by torture" -- perhaps its bluntest assessment of CSIS's intelligence-gathering practices to date.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee, which began looking into the issue two years ago, stops short of accepting Toronto lawyer Paul Copeland's assertion CSIS had shown a "total lack of concern" about evidence possibly gathered through coercive means.

But it finds that CSIS's concern has focused on the impact torture might have on the reliability of information it uses, rather than obligations under the Charter of Rights, the Criminal Code and international treaties "that absolutely reject torture."

How Benamar Benatta 'disappeared' after 9/11. The Canadian government sent him to the U.S. where he was accused of being behind the 9/11 bombings: 'The way they accused me, I thought my life was over'
 
Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen, January 26, 2008

Toronto's Benamar Benatta calls himself a forgotten victim of Sept. 11.

Mr. Benatta, 33, a former Algerian air force lieutenant, also has the dubious distinction of being the first victim of Canada's sometimes overzealous security response to the U.S. terror attacks.

Former Ottawa engineer Maher Arar is the best known victim of Canada's post-9/11 national security excesses. A secretive federal inquiry is now exploring what happened to three other Arab Canadians -- Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin -- who, like Mr. Arar, say they were tortured in Syria based on faulty Canadian intelligence.

David Ljunggren, Reuters, 17 January 2008

OTTAWA -- Foreign Affairs has put the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured and also classifies some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, according to a document obtained by Reuters Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the Harper government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel.

The document -- part of a training course on torture awareness given to diplomats -- mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.

The man, Omar Khadr, is the only Canadian in Guantanamo. His defenders said the document made a mockery of Ottawa's claims that Mr. Khadr was not being mistreated.

Jim Brown (CP), The Ottawa Sun, January 8, 2008

OTTAWA - Canadians may abhor torture, but when it comes to fighting global terrorism their government often has to collaborate with regimes that aren't as respectful of human rights, says a federal lawyer.

Michael Peirce told a commission of inquiry Tuesday that Canadian police and security officials can't run the risk of ignoring important intelligence, no matter where they may find it.

"Unfortunately, we know that terrorism is often exported from countries with poor human rights records," Peirce said. "Canada cannot afford to isolate itself, in its information gathering, from those important sources of information."

The inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci, is investigating claims by three Arab-Canadians that they were detained and tortured in Syria and Egypt on the basis of tips provided by Canadian authorities.

By Dan Froomkin, The Washington Post, December 7, 2007

Note: Information sourced to Zubaydah is being used against Adil Charkaoui.

The New York Times, MARK MAZZETTI, December 7, 2007

Note: Information sourced to Zubaydah is being used against Adil Charkaoui. - CJAC