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Marc Thibodeau
Press
The director of the French-speaking Canadian section of the human rights organization, France-Isabelle Langlois, believes that new information disclosed on Tuesday by Press in relation to the actions of the Canadian security forces with regard to the Mauritanian national are worrying and make a thorough and independent examination of their behavior inevitable.
“We can see that they did not have much against Mr. Slahi, except circumstantial ‘evidence’, and that they had to extrapolate,” said Mr.me Langlois, who is particularly concerned that an apparently benign conversation about sugar and tea was intercepted in Canada and relayed to American investigators as highly suspect in the wake of the “millennium attack” project.
Subsequent interrogations by CSIS of the Mauritanian national while he was detained in Guantánamo also raise concerns, says Mr.me Langlois.
Mr. Slahi affirms that the agents dispatched there in 2003 questioned him at length about the people he had known while living in Montreal in the late 1990s, showing him in particular photos proving that he had been the subject of sustained monitoring.
The ex-detainee from Guantánamo, who was apprehended after the September 11, 2001 attacks at the request of the United States and held for 14 years in military prison before being released without charge, said officials of the interrogation gave him no assurance as to what would be done with his testimony.
He adds that American agents were following the progress of the exchanges live since an FBI investigator intervened to try to calm him while he protested against the approach of the Canadian authorities and held them accountable for his detention.
During cross-examination in 2005 by lawyers for child soldier Omar Khadr, a now deceased senior CSIS official, William Hooper, said his agents had not seen fit to ask their American counterparts to guarantee that the information gathered during their stay in Guantánamo would not be used to incriminate the young man even if he risked the death penalty.
Political reactions
The New Democratic Party believes that new information on the action of Canadian law enforcement in Mr. Slahi’s case “shows that it is imperative that an independent investigation take place.”
If they “committed reprehensible acts in this affair, it is necessary at all costs that the light be made so that the practices of our intelligence agencies are reformed and that justice be done”, affirmed the deputy leader of the party of the federal opposition, Alexandre Boulerice.
The Bloc Québécois spokesperson for public security, Kristina Michaud, said on Tuesday that the government had a responsibility to ensure that “everything was done in accordance with the law and the usual procedures” by the forces of security and then report its findings to the opposition parties.
The Conservative Party has not reacted to this case despite repeated requests for Press. A spokesperson, Alex Rioux, had said last week that the training would speak on the issue if he succeeded in “finding someone” to do so, but never came forward.
“There is nothing to expect from the Conservative Party in this matter,” said Mme Langlois, who intends to step up pressure on the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with his colleagues from Amnesty International in order to force him to act.
The Department of Public Safety, which is headed by former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, finds no fault with the work of law enforcement and reiterated on Tuesday that it had no information to warrant an independent investigation into their role in Mr. Slahi’s quarrels.
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