Sunday, May 11, 2008

I Am Sorry, Abousfian Abdelrazik

6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

Source: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a.k.a. "Inconvenient and Awkard Liberal Propaganda Intended to Thwart the War on Terror"


Fortunately the Constitution of Canada doesn't apply to you if you're non-whitish and Muslim, in which case the Canadian government can order you to remain indefinitely in Sudan. It can even, on your behalf, reject an offer from Sudan to fly you home!

Mr. Abdelrazik was imprisoned by the Sudanese authorities at the request of CSIS several years ago, and released when even some "interrogations" by CSIS officials - which hopefully don't include waterboarding, like their American counterparts - failed to turn up much of anything in the way of evidence. In the meantime he is being held in confinement at the embassy in Khartoum.

In fairness, the fault in this case probably lies as much with the Department of Foreign Affairs as with CSIS, but the latter organization has been sticking their neck out far too often lately. Time to clip them a little. Just recently for example, it was revealed that CSIS operatives are active in Afghanistan. The conclusion of the organization's official rubber-stamper, the Inspector General, was that "new rules" were needed to "reflect" this situation.

Hahaha. The word the Inspector General is looking for is "illegal," i.e. it is illegal for CSIS operatives to be active in Afghanistan, because the CSIS Act spells out specific responsibilities for that organization and going overseas into warzones on offensive operations is not one of them. (Ironically, flying to Sudan to interrogate illegally detained Canadian citizens might be part of the organization's legal mandate.)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

For more material on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms I encourage you and your readers to visit www.charterofrights.ca -- an unbaised, plain language, and interactive look at the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It also contains relevant case law and precedents.