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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

April 9, 2022 - 9 avril 2022

ICLMG Event: "The least fair law in Canada": Why the Extradition Act must be reformed

Tuesday, April 12 at 12pm ET

Canada’s extradition system is broken, with the Extradition Act being described as “the least fair law in Canada.” The Meng Wanzhou case has raised questions about extradition proceedings that have significant foreign policy implications, while the grave violations of the rights of Dr. Hassan Diab, wrongfully extradited to France, lays bare how the system fails Canadian citizens.

Join us for an important webinar discussion on why we must act now to fix this broken system and a new blueprint, known as the Halifax Proposals, for how to make it happen.

Featuring:

Sharry Aiken, associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University and co-editor-in-chief of PKI Global Justice Journal
Rob Currie, professor of law at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University
Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
John Packer, director of the Human Rights Research & Education Centre, University of Ottawa

Plus: a premiere screening of a short video on the problems with the Extradition Act from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

Co-hosted by Queen’s University, the Human Rights Research & Education Centre at the University of Ottawa and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

A video of this webinar will be available after the event.

This event is hosted from the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee Peoples and is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties.

Please share and invite your friends on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

TAKE ACTION: Canada must reform the Extradition Act

ICLMG: In clear view: Confronting Canadian police use of facial recognition technology

The Monitor 29/03/2022 - We’ve known for years that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been dodging rules around surveillance and privacy protections. While the problem dates back much further, the issue has grown exponentially in the 20 years since the start of the War on Terror, following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. It led to an all-out effort by national security agencies to collect as much information as possible, with little regard for privacy or other rights.

In 2016, it was revealed that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had been illegally retaining troves of Canadians’ data completely unrelated to threats in order to engage in data analysis. While the data was “walled-off,” the response from the federal government wasn’t to forbid such data-collection, but instead to legalize it with the passage of the National Security Act in 2019. While the bill established a series of strict safeguards around private data about Canadians, this was less so for foreign information, and created nearly open-season on the wide-spread collection of vaguely-defined “publicly available information.”

This past June, the RCMP was found to have broken the law when they used facial recognition technology that violated the most basic aspects of Canada’s privacy laws. The RCMP had been using the Clearview system for months and made hundreds of searches—for what, we don’t know—hiding it from the Privacy Commissioner, the media and the public. In fact, it was eventually revealed that the RCMP has had an almost 20-year history of using facial recognition technology, without ever revealing what technology they’ve used or how they use it. The Mounties’ recent foray into facial recognition isn’t limited to Clearview AI. Last year, the Tyee also revealed that the RCMP in B.C. had contracted with a US company for use of its “terrorist” facial recognition database. This company promised access to a databank of 700,000 images of terrorists; who they are, how they are determined to be “terrorists” or the accuracy of the company’s information is impossible to assess. The RCMP won’t reveal why or how they used this system either.

Facial recognition technology, and in particular facial recognition surveillance, presents its own particular set of hazards. That’s why organizations who study the issue across Canada—ranging from academic institutes to think tanks to human right and civil liberties groups—have called for, at a minimum, a moratorium on law enforcement and intelligence agency use of the technology until there is further, public study and appropriate rules put in place. We at the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, along with nearly 70 other organizations and experts on the issue, have demanded an outright ban on the use of facial recognition for surveillance purposes, along with a moratorium for all other uses of the technology.

The Canadian government needs to ban the use of facial recognition tech by law enforcement because:

1. Facial recognition allows for mass, indiscriminate and warrantless surveillance

2. There is a dangerous lack of regulation of facial recognition technology in Canada, including around transparency and accountability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies

3. Facial recognition systems are inaccurate and biased, and

4. Facial recognition technology is a slippery slope.

TAKE ACTION: Ban facial recognition surveillance by law enforcement

ICLMG: Canadian Iranians watchlisted because of mandatory military service

Facebook 06/04/2022 - "Designated Terrorists: Conscription Into Revolutionary Guards Haunts Iranian Dual Nationals Decades Later" is an incredible and important reporting by Murtaza Hussain for The Intercept about the impact of the US listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity has had on former Iranian military conscripts. We were approached by a group of Canadian citizens of Iranian descent who served their mandatory military service, sometimes decades ago, who are now facing significant problems because they were watchlisted, and blocked from entering or flying over the US.

This means lost jobs because of the inability to enter the United States. But little known is that the US requires all international flights in and out of Canada that are deemed to fly over US airspace to be screened against the US No Fly List. Estimates are that more than 80% of international flights in and out of Canada (likely more) fly over US airspace. This means that these Iranian Canadians could essentially be stranded in Canada - or blocked from returning - if they are flagged when they fly. (This isn't limited to Iranian Canadians - we've long received reports about people in Canada unable to fly out or return to Canada on certain flights because of the US No Fly List - never mind the Canadian list). As the article points out, this is not just an "inconvenience." It means interrogation, detention, separation from family, and constant worry about what will happen next. This is particularly true because watchlists are shared between countries, including Canada & the US.

And there is also pressure on Canada and other countries to follow the same path as the US. What would happen to the likely tens of thousands of Canadian men of Iranian descent, and their families and communities, if all of a sudden they are listed as terrorists because they served their mandatory military service (under threat of severe penalty) decades ago in another country? As one subject of the article says, he translated documents on water management for the military, & now he is banned from the US & lost his employment. Canadian officials, including Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino & Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, need to take notice and commit to defending the rights of these Canadians. It's also another example of the dangers of watchlists, "terrorist entities" lists, No Fly Lists - really, the entire secretive apparatus upon which the "War on Terror" has been built, its ongoing impact, and the systemic racism at its core. Thank you to Murtaza and the Intercept for bringing this to light, and we appreciate being able to contribute to the analysis in the article. Source

Intercepted Podcast: Iranian Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists Due to Military Service

ICLMG: CSIS jumps on latest crisis to ask for more powers, yet again

Twitter 29/03/22 - The news "Threats Within: Canada’s spy service boosts attention to ‘ideological’ domestic extremism" raises so many questions and concerns. 1st, in 2019, CSIS was granted broad new data collection powers including to collect, retain & query datasets in 3 categories: Canadian, Foreign & Publicly Available Information. 2 yrs later, we're being told they need more powers, yet they have never adequately explained how they use the powers they already have. 2nd, as is pointed out, not clear why they need new powers to access "basic subscriber information" to address current threats. Both CSIS and RCMP have been revealed to be monitoring activists online for years. See, for example, the BCCLA's complaint regarding CSIS. Nor have they seemed to have trouble collecting information about Muslims in Canada, either. It is surprising that *now* they seem to be concerned about their lawful authority.

If they are admitting that they weren't actually empowered to collect this information before, great. But not sure we should reward them for that. Third, in the quoted letter, CSIS director says he believes changes to CSIS powers should be "transparent," that "Canadians have a right to know why" CSIS needs new powers, and that a "well-informed public discussion" would "ensure continued trust by the public." But this contradicts what we've seen so far: the original proposal to grant CSIS the power to collect basic subscriber information was tacked on to the end of the highly problematic online harms proposal released in the middle of last summer, as part of a shortened consultation held during an election that provided almost no information or context.

It was the near opposite of a "well-informed public discussion," and they were called on it in submissions to the consultation. During hearings on C-59 (2017-19), they gave the bare minimum explanation of how "publicly available information" would be collected or used.

This has been much longer than I intended, but in short: we need to be deeply skeptical of any request from CSIS for new powers, and the idea that they will be accompanied by a fulsome, public debate is contradicted by their recent actions. Great work from Alex Boutilier for covering this! Addendum: Great quote from Barbara Perry: “I mean, there were certainly no qualms about surveilling Muslims,” Perry said, referring to post-9/11 intelligence gathering. “It really is interesting that now they’re concerned about needing additional powers, rather than using the powers that they already have.” Source

Civil society first reactions to the new Senate bill on searches of devices at the border

Twitter 31/03/22 - ICLMG's Tim McSorley: Less than 24hrs since a new bill was introduced to allow for searches of devices at the border, & chorus of deep concern is already loud. Gov't is inventing a "threshold" of "reasonable general concern." As Brenda McPhail puts so well, equals "I thought it was a good idea at the time."

CCLA's Brenda McPhail: First take: the new device search bill creates a new (non) standard of “a reasonable general concern” as a threshold for a search. That has in my non-legal opinion a similar meaning as “because I thought it was a good idea at the time”. Hope is predictably dashed.First take: the new device search bill creates a new (non) standard of “a reasonable general concern” as a threshold for a search. That has in my non-legal opinion a similar meaning as “because I thought it was a good idea at the time”. Hope is predictably dashed.

Citizen Lab's Lex Gill: tfw when a Court of Appeal tells you your border search standard is unconstitutional so you just make up new words for basically the same search standard.

CIPPIC's Tamir Israel: The Gov's new cell phone border search Bill [HT @ICLMG] invents an entire new legal standard just so CBSA can continue functionally indiscriminate searches of digital devices despite the Alberta CA's decision in Canfield. Truly disappointing. Source

BILL S-7: An Act to amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016

Canada Should Mark Ramadan by Helping Bring Home Unlawfully Detained Muslims

Human Rights Watch 31/03/22 - April marks the beginning of Ramadan for Muslims worldwide, a month of fasting, patience, and compassion that many here in Canada will mark surrounded by friends and family. But for some Canadian-Muslims, there is little to celebrate given the increasingly desperate plight of their loved ones unlawfully detained in northeast Syria.

With no end in sight to their misery, an estimated four dozen Canadian Muslims have spent three or more years arbitrarily detained in squalid prisons and camps for people suspected of ties to the Islamic State (ISIS). During his time as Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has worked to create stronger relationships among Muslim communities in Canada, consistently releasing statements at the beginning of Ramadan, visiting Muslim community centers to break fast with worshippers, and even saying the values celebrated during Ramadan are inherently Canadian. But these efforts fall short when the Canadian government abandons a group of Canadian-Muslims, more than half of them young children, in life-threatening, deeply degrading, and often inhumane conditions in northeast Syria.

Several of Canada’s allies have repatriated some or many of nationals from the same prisons and camps holding the Canadians. The United States government has even offered to help Canada repatriate its citizens. And the Kurdish-led authorities who oversee these prisons and camps have urged home countries to repatriate their citizens. Yet Canada’s approach has been piecemeal at best, allowing only three Canadians to come home so far. In January 2021, Global Affairs Canada even developed a secret policy framework, specifically for this group of Canadian Muslim detainees, asserting that the government has no legal obligation to repatriate them.

But Canada does have an obligation under international law to protect its citizens if they face serious human rights abuses abroad and to provide consular assistance without discrimination. This Ramadan, if Prime Minister Trudeau really wants to support Canadian-Muslims, he should take urgent action to safely repatriate these detainees, starting with those most vulnerable. They should be rehabilitated, reintegrated and, as appropriate, investigated and prosecuted for any crimes they may have committed, just like any other Canadian. Read more - Lire plus

Matthew Behrens: Canada Must Stop Monstering Jack Letts and Bring Him Home

NEW ACTION: "I forgot what the sun looks like": Free Jack Letts and all Canadian Detainees in NE Syria

Thousands of Foreigners Unlawfully Held in NE Syria

Clashes in Syrian camp housing IS families kill at least 3

Syria: UN experts profoundly concerned for missing and injured children after January attack on ISIL prison

CBSA Discriminates against Egyptian Refugees

TAKE ACTION: Write PM Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and your MP: Stop CBSA's Treatment of Egyptian Refugee Families

Brent Patterson: How many people will Canada’s new F-35 fighter jet kill?

rabble.ca 29/03/22 - On Monday, the Government of Canada announced it would be entering final negotiations with Lockheed Martin to buy 88 of its F-35 stealth fighter jets. The Government of Canada media release noted that the procurement process involving two other fighter jets “evaluated these aircraft against typical scenarios familiar to NATO and NORAD allies.” The CBC has also previously reported that one scenario in the request for proposals in Canada’s fighter jet procurement process “involves Canada’s future fighter jets evading Russian-style air defences to bomb an airport.” This month, Germany also chose to purchase the F-35.

Rafael Loss, a security expert at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, says: “If you have to deliver the nuclear bomb, you better do it with a stealth aircraft than with an aircraft that doesn’t have that capability.” Despite the questions this might prompt, Parliamentary opposition to this fighter jet purchase will likely be minimal. The Conservatives, who as government chose the F-35 in 2010, will likely focus on the long-delay in purchasing the aircraft. They lamented Monday: “The Liberals announced they will be starting discussions to potentially award a contract at the end of 2022 to Lockheed Martin Corp. for F-35 fighter jets if negotiations go well.” Their view is that: “This announcement is a far cry from the commitment and clarity Canadians expect from their federal government.” The NDP has seemingly opted to focus on Arctic defence and job creation. NDP defence critic Lindsay Mathyssen commented: “We also said that any procurement must provide much-needed jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry in cities like Montreal and Winnipeg.”

It’s likely subsequent debate on the F-35 will focus on contract negotiations and maybe environmental impacts or spending priorities, but not on this rather blunt question: How many people will Canada’s new fighter jet kill? This despite the Liberal Party platform in 2015 pointing to this issue. At that time, they stated: “We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber. The primary mission of our fighter aircraft should remain the defence of North America, not stealth first-strike capability.” Lockheed Martin itself has also highlighted the F-35’s offensive capabilities: “With stealth designed in from day one, the F-35 has an unmatched ability to evade enemy detection and enter contested airspace.” Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 fighter jets conducted approximately 1,598 bombing missions over the past 30 years. Piecing together various mainstream media news reports suggest they conducted 56 bombing missions over Iraq in 1991, 558 over Serbia in 1999, 733 over Libya in 2011, 246 over Iraq in 2014, and 5 over Syria in 2015.

And yet military estimates about how many people were killed in these bombing missions has never been disclosed.

In November 2015, The Globe and Mail reported that a CF-18 air strike that month over northern Iraq killed between 5 and 13 civilians and injured more than a dozen others.

And in May 2017, the CBC reported that CF-18s missed their targets 17 times during bombing missions over Iraq. Notably, that latter article highlighted: “The air force said it has ‘no information’ that any of its airstrikes, on-target or otherwise, killed or wounded civilians.” No information? While terrible to contemplate, it seems to be a fundamental question to ask “how many people will be killed” based on past experience when Canada is planning to spend at least $19 billion on purchasing the F-35 and almost $60 billion more on operating them over the next 30 years. Who in Parliament will ask the question? Read more - Lire plus

Just Peace Advocates: Choosing the F35 means Canada rejecting peacekeeping, instead committing to wage wars of aggression

U.S. airstrike killed 11 Libyan civilians and allies, human rights groups say

The Intercept 03/04/2022 - In late November 2018, missiles obliterated three sport utility vehicles in North Africa. “In coordination with the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), U.S. Africa Command conducted a precision airstrike near Al Uwaynat, Libya, November 29, 2018, killing eleven (11) al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terrorists and destroying three (3) vehicles,” according to an Africa Command, or AFRICOM, press release issued the next day. “At this time, we assess no civilians were injured or killed in this strike.” Madogaz Musa Abdullah, the brother of one of the victims, says that’s impossible. “AFRICOM killed 11 people on the basis that they were terrorists, but these young men were completely against terrorism,” he told The Intercept. “They were killed without evidence. I challenge AFRICOM to produce evidence that even one of these men was on a U.S. target list.”

On Friday, Abdullah, along with a spokesperson for his ethnic Tuareg community and representatives of three nongovernmental organizations, filed a criminal complaint against the former Italian commander at the U.S. air base in Sigonella, Sicily, seeking accountability for his role in the killings. They have asked the public prosecutor’s office in Siracusa, where the base is located, to investigate and prosecute Col. Gianluca Chiriatti and other Italian officials involved in the attack for murder. “Death is a fact that we cannot deny but the injustice of eleven people being killed, accused of terrorism despite the fact they were innocent, affected us deeply especially when we had to bury them in a common grave,” said Abdullah, in a sworn statement accompanying the complaint. “This, and the hospitals refusing to issue death certificates, impacted the families of the victims psychologically, especially the mothers and fathers of the victims. We are devastated.”

According to legal documents shared exclusively with The Intercept and Italy’s Avvenire, most of the men killed were members of the Libyan armed forces; several had previously fought against Al Qaeda or even alongside the United States when it battled the Islamic State in the city of Sirte two years earlier. Read more - Lire plus

Back from Kabul, Women’s Delegation Urges U.S. & Europe to Unfreeze Afghan Funds Amid Humanitarian Crisis

DemocracyNow! 06/04/2022 - Women in Afghanistan are protesting a number of gender-based restrictions from the Taliban, including an order in March to shut down public high schools for girls. In response, U.S. officials canceled talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, continuing to freeze billions in Afghan assets while Afghanistan spirals into economic catastrophe.

We speak with Masuda Sultan and Medea Benjamin, two co-founders of Unfreeze Afghanistan, a coalition advocating for the release of funding for Afghan civilians. They recently visited Afghanistan as part of a U.S. women’s delegation and say the U.S. has a responsibility to alleviate the suffering there, which it had a major role in causing over two decades of war. “It seems that every time there is a showdown between the Taliban and the international community, it’s the Afghan people that suffer,” says Sultan. “We are now having a kind of economic warfare against the Afghan people,” adds Benjamin. Read more - Lire plus

Annihilation over compromise for Myanmar’s generals

Asia Times 04/04/2022 - If anyone had thought that there could, as the UN and the outside world advocate, be a dialogue between Myanmar’s junta and the democratic opposition, those hopes were effectively dashed when the country’s military leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, gave a fiery speech on Armed Forces Day, March 27.

On the occasion, the coup leader vowed to “annihilate to the end” want he described as “terrorist groups” and also “urged” Myanmar’s many ethnic armed organizations not to support those “terrorist groups” and, instead, “live within a legal framework” (sic), which analysts interpret as sticking to a now-collapsed National Ceasefire Agreement that the military concluded with a limited number of ethnic rebel armies in 2015.

Equally important was the show of unity the armed forces displayed on March 27, dispelling all persistent but misguided notions of “power struggles” between hardliners in the military and “reformists” supposedly represented by Thein Sein, who served as president from 2011 to 2016. [...]

According to the independent advocacy group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 1,723 unarmed protesters have been killed or tortured to death in various detention centers since the coup. More than 13,000 people, including activists, local politicians, journalists and health workers who supported the anti-junta movement have been jailed.

Those figures do not include the thousands of villagers who have been killed in airstrikes and artillery bombardment in ethnic areas, where resistance to the coup has grown strong over the past year. According to an announcement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on February 11, the number of Internally displaced people (IDPs) in Myanmar has doubled since last year’s coup, now crossing the 800,000-mark. Read more - Lire plus

Azeezah Kanji: Save us from ‘securo-feminism’

Al Jazeera 27/03/2022 - Welcome to the brave new world of securo-feminism*. In the long tradition of systems of patriarchal violence representing themselves as the solution to patriarchal violence, the ongoing expansion of draconian “war on terror” measures is being advertised as an advance for women’s rights. [...] Now, many are advocating for states to consider violence against women as a form of “terrorism” – ignoring how counterterrorism itself has functioned globally to sanctify state violence against women as well as men.

Among the women placed in the crosshairs of the “war on terror” are Palestinian women’s rights defender Khitam Saafin, sentenced last month by an Israeli military court to 15 months in prison after her organisation, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, was listed alongside several other Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist” entities by Israel; Sudanese women’s rights defenders including Amira Osman, arrested and detained in January on “terrorism” accusations by the military coup government; Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, tried in a special “terrorism court” for her work in service of women’s rights (she was released last February after being tortured and imprisoned for almost three years); Aafia Siddiqui, abducted, disappeared into a US “black site”, and sentenced to 86 years for “attempting to shoot” an American soldier (although she was the one who was actually shot); Indigenous Mapuche land and rights defenders like Patricia Roxana Troncoso Robles, criminalised as “terrorists” by the Chilean state; and Indian activists such as Hidme Markam and Ishrat Jahan, imprisoned under sweeping anti-terrorism laws for protesting against the Hindutva government’s assault on Adivasi (Indigenous) and Muslim communities.

Such cases are not simply an “abuse” or “misuse” of counterterrorism, but an expression of its original function: to suppress resistance to the colonial, capitalist status quo, whether on the 20th-century British killing fields of India and Kenya, or in the current-day open-air concentration camp of Gaza. Likewise, the collusion of some strains of feminism with the “war on terror” is not an “aberration” or “co-optation”. Rather, it is the continuation of a long history of Western feminist collaborations with white supremacist and imperial rule – from penetrating colonised women’s harems, to promoting moral panics about Black and brown men for violence against women, to providing ideological cover for expanding policing and prisons. According to this version of feminism, the intensifying criminalisation of women under counterterrorism is to be hailed as a sign of “progress”. As a claimed corrective to the stereotype of the “oppressed Muslim woman”, academics and policymakers have been urging for Muslim women’s “agency” to be recognised by treating them as “terrorists” on a par with Muslim men.

Exemplifying the perversities of “equal-opportunity” criminalisation, Syrian migrant woman Rehab Dughmosh was charged with 14 terrorism offences and sentenced to seven years imprisonment by a Canadian court, for waving a golf club and a knife around in a store – despite having caused only one minor injury, and having been diagnosed as experiencing paranoid schizophrenic delusions at the time. Dughmosh’s “attack” has been cited by women security scholars to critique male-centric agencies for overlooking Muslim women as threats; although Dughmosh was in fact punished much more harshly than many white men responsible for more damaging racist assaults. Similarly, the UK has stripped citizenship from young Muslims like Shamima Begum – who travelled to join ISIL (ISIS) at the age of 15 – while teenaged British Nazi bomb plotters and cell leaders have been offered rehabilitative measures and spared. [...]

Senior CIA analysts are feted by Oprah as “superwomen” for writing books on how counterterrorism is like mothering – replete with such wisdoms as “the moms of America will [defeat Osama] bin Laden and all terrorists like him”, “don’t give in to a bully” (in which the US is supposedly not the bully but the bullied), and “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”. Surveillance drone manufacturers hold free drone giveaways for International Women’s Day, while websites such as Women And Drones honour “trailblazers” like Miriam Foxx: manager of the Chula Vista Police Department’s drone programme, who previously “oversaw detainee operations” at the torture camp of Guantanamo Bay. [...] In a “civilised” world order driving itself towards military conflagration, nuclear annihilation, and ecological collapse, it is not Muslim women who urgently need to be saved from their own "extremism". Read more - Lire plus

Special Report: French mosque closures based on ‘secretive evidence,’ critics say

Reuters 05/04/2022 - For three years, Karim Daoud ran the mosque in this small town in northwest France. He also coached kids’ soccer teams and for more than two decades has worked for the local council's youth services. Daoud was among those who visited a nearby Catholic church to express solidarity following a deadly Islamist extremist attack at a church in southern France in 2020. Last October, the interior ministry’s local office gave the 46-year old a medal to recognise his long service as a public employee.

Days later, the local interior ministry office closed the mosque for six months, saying it was promoting “a radical practice of Islam” and “cultivating a feeling of hate towards France,” according to the closure order. But the mosque’s representatives - who deny the allegations - say the government has provided scant public evidence about the grounds for that decision. It’s one of a growing number of mosques closed by authorities using an array of powers that rights activists, international organisations - including the United Nations - and members of the Muslim community say give authorities carte blanche to close down places of worship without proper scrutiny and with procedures so opaque the case can’t be overturned.

“It’s Kafkaesque," said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, a UN special rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, of the legal procedures used in such cases, which can include evidence where the source isn’t identified. “The flirtation with secretive evidence is in itself worrying, but it also breaches provisions in international treaties” relating to the right to a fair trial and equality before the law, she said. The Elysee Palace declined to comment for this story. The interior ministry told Reuters that the government has strengthened the ability of authorities to prevent and combat Islamist terrorism over the past five years and that all the legal measures adopted were “done in full respect of the rule of law.” The local interior ministry office declined to comment.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who came to power five years ago on a centrist platform, has toughened his stance on law and order – a hot-button issue in a country that has seen a series of deadly extremist attacks in recent years. Macron is running for re-election this week in a contest where he faces stiff competition from the right.

The 44-year old president has implemented a raft of laws and measures aimed, he says, at tackling violent extremism and Islamist radicals who challenge France’s secular values. But critics say Macron has given outsize powers to security forces and chipped away at democratic protections, leaving Muslims vulnerable to abuse. Many Muslims now feel France - home to one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe - has become a more hostile place. Interior ministry data shows a sharp increase in anti-Muslim discriminatory and other acts in 2021, even as other faiths saw a decline.

Macron’s government has touted the Allonnes mosque closure as a prime example of its crackdown on what it calls Islamism. French authorities have closed 22 mosques over the past 18 months, according to the interior ministry - which, according to a ministry official, was a marked increase from the combined total over the previous three years. It added authorities have investigated some 90 out France’s total of roughly 2,500 Muslim places of worship on suspicions of spreading “separatist” ideology, which the government says challenges France’s secularism. On the Allonnes mosque, the interior ministry said authorities provided detailed evidence to the court to support the allegations and that the mosque’s lawyers had the opportunity to challenge it, but were ultimately unsuccessful. The prosecutor’s office told Reuters that there was an ongoing judicial investigation into whether leaders or members of the Allonnes mosque association were “advocating terrorism and inciting terrorism,” without naming individuals. No charges have been filed, the prosecutor’s office said.

Nabila Asmane, a lawyer representing the mosque’s leaders, told Reuters that the interior ministry didn’t provide sufficient evidence to substantiate the serious accusations it made as part of its case to close the mosque, that the government’s case was based on false allegations and that the investigation hadn’t been thorough. Asmane added: “It's not the lawyers that failed, but justice." France's highest administrative court in November upheld the government’s decision to close the mosque. In January, the government announced the mosque association’s dissolution; an appeal by the mosque leaders in the same court - the Conseil d’Etat - is still pending. Under the administrative procedures, such as those used with the Allonnes mosque, the closures are temporary. But some mosques don’t re-open, according to rights activists and the interior ministry. The ministry didn’t specify how many of the 22 mosques had reopened. In October 2017 - five months after Macron became president - the French parliament adopted a new anti-terrorism law that bolstered police surveillance powers and made it easier to close mosques suspected of preaching hatred, with limited judicial oversight. It replaced the state of emergency that had been imposed in late 2015 after militants killed 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris. Read more - Lire plus

Islamophobia on the rise as French presidential election nears

Guantanamo Prisoner Finally Returned to Algeria After Being Cleared for Transfer in 2016

Center for Constitutional Rights 02/04/2022 - The U.S. government made public today that Sufyian Barhoumi was sent home to Algeria, nearly twenty years after arriving at Guantánamo and six years after being cleared for transfer. Unexplained bureaucratic problems during the Obama administration delayed his release,and he was left stranded in the prison during the Trump administration, which all but stopped transfers.

In 2008, the U.S. government briefly charged Mr. Barhoumi in a military commision, but it soon dropped all charges without explanation. Even when, in 2012, he offered to plead guilty to any crime the government wanted to charge him with, so long as he could receive a fixed date for release home to his elderly mother, prosecutors – having ceased to believe he was guilty of anything – refused to do so. Yet he spent four years awaiting formal clearance and then another six waiting for transfer back home to his aging mother.

“Our government owes Sufyian and his mother years of their lives back,” said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “I’m overjoyed that he will be home with his family, but I will dearly miss his constant good humor and empathy for the suffering of others in the utterly depressing environment of Guantánamo.”

Mr. Barhoumi, who became a fluent English-speaker, was well-liked at Guantánamo by both guards and other imprisoned men. His father, a lawyer imprisoned by the French during the Algerian independence movement, died while Sufyian was in prison. Mr. Barhoumi is pleased he has arrived home in time to attend his younger brother’s wedding later this year, and plans to take that brother’s place as caretaker for his mother. Last week, he told his attorneys that the deputy camp commander called him in and told him he was going home, “And at that moment, I saw my mother in the room in front of me, and I couldn’t stop crying.”

A multi-lingual fan of pop culture whose favorite movie is the cheerleader battle film Bring It On, he often stated that he had “no black heart against America” despite his years of detention. His final words to his attorneys on Thursday were “Hasta la vista!” The Biden administration has now transferred three men from Guantánamo. From a total of 780 men, 37 remain; 25 are not charged, and 18 have been cleared for transfer. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which was the first organization to file a case on behalf of men imprisoned at Guantánamo, still has three clients there: Sharqawi Al Hajj, Guled Hassan Duran, and Majid Khan. Read more - Lire plus

John Kiriakou: Biden Is Denying CIA Torture Victims Their Day in Court (podcast)

Some Guantánamo Prisoners Fear Transfer to US Prisons Due to Brutal Conditions

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ACTIONS & EVENTS

NEW Free Jack Letts and all Canadian Detainees in NE Syria

Canada must immediately act to free four dozen Canadian men, women and children left to rot in one of a series of notorious Northeastern Syrian prisons and detention camps described as “Guantanamo on the Euphrates.” In January 2022, scores of inmates – all arbitrarily detained – were massacred when the camps were attacked by ISIS, followed by an anti-ISIS bombing campaign and vicious counter-attack.

The longest held detainee is Jack Letts, 26, who has been imprisoned for almost 5 years without charge under conditions the United Nations has described as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”