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Anti-terrorism laws
Supreme Court upholds anti-terrorism laws
The Globe and Mail 14/12/2012 - Canada's anti-terrorism laws do not violate the constitutional rights of those suspected of furthering terrorist acts, the  Supreme Court of Canada has ruled. The landmark ruling means that an Islamic terrorist from Ottawa - Mohammed Momin Khawaja - will spend his life behind bars for aiding a violent jihadist group based in England. It also paves the way for the extradition of two other Ontario men wanted in the U.S for helping acquire arms to be used by Sri Lankan terrorists. Civil libertarians had denounced some of the provisions as being so broad and intrusive that they would chill free speech and religious freedom, and would leave innocent political activists subject to prosecution and harsh sentences. "The impugned provision is clearly drafted in a manner respectful of diversity, as it allows for the non-violent expression of political, religious and ideological views," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the court.
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The Prudent Court: Anti-terrorism, Charter rights and judicial caution
Top court upholds motive clause in anti-terrorism law
R. v. Khawaja
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War on terror
Most Canadians not willing to give up civil liberties to combat terrorism: Poll
Canada.com 19/12/2012 - Sixty per cent of Canadians disagree with the statement "in order to curb terrorism in this country, I am ready to give up some civil  liberties," according to a new poll of 2,200 Canadians commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies, and it was the only result that was relatively consistent across all ages of people surveyed. When asked if they were worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack in Canada, 44 per cent of respondents said "yes," but when broken down by age, that number ranged from 30 per cent in people aged 18-24 up to 50 per cent in people age 65 and over. Just over half of respondents, overall, said they think terrorism is most attributable to religious fundamentalism. But that number was much smaller in Canadians age 18-24, where only 31 per cent said religious fundamentalism was the most important factor, and 25 per cent attributed terrorism to poverty and economic inequality, and another 25 per cent attributed it to Western foreign policy.
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Rule of law
Scandal alert: Congress is quietly abandoning the 5th amendment
The Atlantic 20/12/12 - Here is the scoop: lawmakers charged with merging the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act decided on Tuesday to drop a provision that would have  explicitly barred the military from holding American citizens and permanent residents in indefinite detention without trial as terrorism suspects, according to Congressional staff members familiar with the negotiations. As Serwer puts it, "The demise of the Feinstein-Lee proposal doesn't necessarily mean that Americans suspected of terrorism in the US can be locked up forever without a trial. But it ensures that the next time a president tries to lock up an American citizen without trial -- as President George W. Bush previously tried -- it will be left up to the courts to decide whether or not it's legal." Don't let the dearth of attention fool you -- this is a scandal. Congress has turned its back on safeguarding a core Constitutional protection and a centuries old requirement of Western justice.
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Torture
Khaled el-Masri and empire's oblivion
Al Jazeera 17/12/2012 - The el-Masri case is part of a larger effort to litigate torture cases from the war on terror in courts worldwide, in response to the US judiciary's near total refusal to entertain civil suits by  survivors (as Lisa Hajjar detailed here). El-Masri himself filed an early case against former CIA director George Tenet, which was thrown out based on an alarmingly expansive reading of the "state secrets" doctrine. Similar petitions are pending in the ECHR against Poland, Romania and Lithuania. El-Masri also has a suit in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The predominance of European countries on this list stems in large part from the fact that Europe was one of the few regions where sufficient political will and resources existed to investigate the worldwide US-driven prison network. We still know next to nothing about transfers between Africa, Asia and the Middle East, which likely involved far more people. Read moreAmerica must finally apologize for CIA rendition programSenate Intelligence Committee takes up "the Pentagon papers of the CIA torture program" behind closed doors: report remains under wraps |
