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Federal Judge: Canada Turns Blind Eye to Torture
Canadian officials turned a blind eye to torture as they tried to deport a terrorism suspect to Egypt, a Federal Court judge ruled yesterday.
Madam Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer said officials in countries such as Egypt can't be trusted when they promise Western countries they won't mistreat deportees.
Canadian officials would be better served, the judge suggested, by giving more weight to the findings of groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch when they document evidence of torture.
Heed torture risk, Canada told Globe & Mail
TORONTO -- Canadian officials turned a blind eye to torture as they tried to deport a terrorism suspect to Egypt, a Federal Court judge ruled yesterday.
Madam Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer said officials in countries such as Egypt can't be trusted when they promise Western countries they won't mistreat deportees.
Canadian officials would be better served, the judge suggested, by giving more weight to the findings of groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch when they document evidence of torture.
The ruling was released in the case of Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub, an Egyptian national the Canadian government has been trying to deport for more than six years.
He admits he once ran a large farming operation for Osama bin Laden in Africa, but he denies being a terrorist.
Mr. Mahjoub is one of five refugee claimants whom the Canadian government has declared to be a possible al-Qaeda-style threat to national security. Under Ottawa's controversial security-certificate procedure, most are jailed pending deportation. But officials have not been able to deport them so far, amid claims their human rights will be violated if sent back to their homelands.
An unnamed Immigration Canada official tried to smooth Mr. Mahjoub's deportation by submitting a written opinion that said groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch overstate Egypt's use of torture. Egyptian authorities, the official suggested, can be taken at their word when they say they won't mistreat alleged terrorists.
Judge Tremblay-Lamer disagreed. She agrees that the delegate of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration "relied on information that went against the bulk of the evidence in concluding there was no institutionalized torture in Egypt."
She added that "the delegate determined that the human-rights documentation from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch was unreliable and not credible and therefore gave it little or no weight."
Judge Tremblay-Lamer thinks better of these groups and has sent the case back to the Immigration Department, instructing officials to give more consideration to the possibility of torture.
The decision, while incremental, builds on increasingly stark language condemning Canada's dealings with states that use torture.
The constitutionality of the security-certificate procedure is being challenged in Federal Court. An alleged Russian spy was recently arrested under the same law, but he is no longer fighting deportation. It is anticipated he will soon be on a plane back to Moscow
Bid to deport suspect dealt blow Toronto Star
Court ruling overturns report that concluded it was unlikely terrorism suspect Mohamed Mahjoub would be tortured if sent back to Egypt
A Federal Court justice has stymied the government's attempts to deport a terrorism suspect to Egypt, calling arguments that the man will not face danger if returned "perverse" and "flawed."
The ruling on Mohamed Mahjoub, 46, marks another setback in the government's use of national security certificates to expel terrorism suspects. Mahjoub has been declared inadmissible as a refugee to Canada because he poses a risk to national security. Canada's spy service alleges Mahjoub was a high-ranking member of the Egyptian Al Jihad and had contact with various terrorism suspects in Canada. He also worked for Osama bin Laden at an agricultural company in Sudan in 1992, before he sought refuge in Toronto.
Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer's ruling this week overturns a government report that concluded it was unlikely Mahjoub would be tortured if deported to Egypt. The report, written by a department official known as the minister's delegate, adopted a "flawed approach (that) can be considered nothing short of patently unreasonable with regard to the substantial risk of torture issue," Tremblay-Lamer wrote.
"The delegate's blanket rejection of information from agencies with worldwide reputations for credibility such as AI and HRW (Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) is puzzling, especially given the institutional reliance of Canadian courts and tribunals on these very sources," the ruling says.
"I find that the delegate's selective reliance on one piece of evidence that held that human rights abuses were not a systemic problem in Egypt, against the overwhelming bulk of the evidence which essentially pointed to the contrary, to be patently unreasonable."
The government also relied on Egypt's pledge that Mahjoub would be treated humanely if removed from Canada, raising the thorny issue now facing many Western countries of how to weigh government assurances from countries with questionable human rights records.
"Even more troubling is the reliance of the delegate on the assurance given by the Egyptian government that Mr. Mahjoub would be treated in full conformity with the Human Rights Charter given the uncontradicted evidence before her that there is no such Charter in Egypt," Tremblay-Lamer wrote.
A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said in an email last night that the department is reviewing the ruling, in order to decide whether to appeal.
Of the five men currently facing expulsion due to alleged ties to Al Qaeda-linked networks, Mahjoub has been detained the longest. In seeking bail for his client this week, his lawyer said Mahjoub had grown ill and paranoid during his 6 1/2 years in custody. He is now on a hunger strike with two other Toronto suspects held at a $3.2-million Kingston facility built especially for these cases (another two suspects from Montreal and Ottawa have been granted bail with strict conditions).
National security certificates fall under the immigration act, and have been condemned by high-profile human rights organizations and individuals such as Alexandre Trudeau. The cases typically drag on for years in court and rely on secret evidence submitted only to a federal court justice.
The same immigration legislation however was used swiftly earlier this month to deport a Russian spy after the government alleged he had been operating covertly in Montreal for more than a decade. In that case, the Russian, whose true identity is still unknown, did not fight his deportation.
But Mahjoub, and the other four men have argued that if they're returned to their birth countries they will be tortured, making the move a violation of a United Nations convention against torture of which Canada is a signatory.
Mahjoub's lawyer, John Norris, said yesterday the government has been "two-faced" on the issue of torture and will soon have to deal with the issue head-on.
"On one hand there are pronouncements that we've never sent anyone to face torture. On the other hand, they are making every effort to send these men now to countries where they face a clear and substantial risk of torture," Norris said.
"They try to do that by cheating and that's what they were called on by Justice Tremblay-Lamer."
The Supreme Court is expected to soon rule on aspects of the national security legislation, including the provision that allows the use of secret evidence.
In Mahjoub's case, the government will now have to write a new assessment as to whether he will face torture if deported, a process that in the past has taken as long as a year.
