'A black day for freedom'
A police raid on a journalist's house is raising serious questions about Canadian government's handling of the war on terror, reports Aziza Sami from Ottawa
The case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian illegally deported by American authorities to Syria two years ago, took an even darker turn last week after police raided the home and office of Juliet O'Neill, a veteran reporter with the Ottawa Citizen newspaper who had been covering the case.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confiscated O'Neill's documents, notebooks and computer in an attempt to uncover the identity of a source who had given O'Neill intelligence information about Arar.
Before the five-hour search was over, news of the raid hit the headlines. Canadian press associations and politicians from both government and opposition parties were up in arms over what they perceived as a growing clamp-down on civil liberties and on the public's right to information.
The RCMP raid is the latest development in a case that has already elicited controversy in Canada over the government's lack of transparency about the role Canadian authorities played in Arar's deportation to Syria.
It remains unclear, for instance, whether the Canadian government knew that the United States was planning to deport Arar to Syria. Canadian intelligence agencies have so far denied that they had any prior knowledge of the deportation.
Repeated calls for a public inquiry into the matter were brushed aside by the government of former Prime Minister Jean ChrŽtien who claimed that an internal RCMP investigation would be sufficient. And until now, this seemed to be the attitude of his successor and current prime minister, Paul Martin.
The court order for the raid, which authorised the RCMP to confiscate O'Neill's belongings, made use of Section 4 of the "Security of Information Act", a law issued by parliament after the events of 11 September 2001. The act prohibits the distribution and "unauthorised possession" of sensitive government materials. In a new precedent for the law, however, Section 4 was used against a journalist.
Problems for O'Neill began last November after she wrote an article claiming that the RCMP had identified Arar as a possible member of an Al-Qa'eda group operating in Ottawa. Citing Canadian intelligence documents, O'Neill quoted RCMP officials as saying that Arar told Syrian military intelligence that he had trained at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in 1993. Arar later said that he made the confession under duress "because I would say anything, in order not to be tortured". Only last week, Arar filed a lawsuit against US authorities for his illegal deportation to Syria.
While the RCMP denies any involvement in the deportation, statements by the US ambassador to Canada, Paul Celluci, as well as a report broadcast last week by the US television news program 60 Minutes suggested that Canadian officials not only knew of the decision, but approved it.
The RCMP's raid on O'Neill's house and office have now added a new dimension to the Maher Arar case. There are growing concerns among a number of civil rights lawyers, Canadian MPs and press associations about a lack of transparency regarding the use of racial profiling and the suppression of freedoms of the press.
Canadian and international press organisations such as the Swiss-based International Press Institute denounced the RCMP raid on O'Neill, while CanWest Global Communications Corporation, which owns the Ottawa Citizen, is appealing the legality of the search warrant. Lambasting the police raid, the corporation's CEO for news and information, Gordon Fisher, described the raid as being reminiscent "of a police state mentality, rather than a Canadian democracy".
O'Neill has been advised by her lawyers not to speak about the case, while her colleagues at the Ottawa Citizen have expressed their dismay and fear that O'Neill faces a possible prison term of up 14 years if convicted.
The Ottawa Citizen's editor-in-chief, Scott Anderson called the incident "a black, black day, for freedom in this country" and appealed to the prime minister to guarantee that O'Neill would not be prosecuted under the Security of Information Act. In an open letter to the prime minister, Anderson wrote, "I commend you for saying in Davos 'the freedom of the press is one of the pillars of our democratic system'. O'Neill was doing her job as a journalist by investigating a story of great public concern."
And while it will be left to the press to defend itself on this matter, it now looks like the Arar case may after all be subject to a public inquiry.
Richard Mahoney, a prominent member of the governing Liberal Party with close ties to Prime Minister Paul Martin, is calling for a judicial probe into the cases of both Maher Arar and O'Neill. Stopping short of condemning the incidents, Mahoney expressed strong concerns that there was "evidence of racial profiling" and that "Canadians were being deprived of their rights."
While attending the World Economic Forum at Davos, the prime minister said that O'Neill was "clearly not a criminal".
The international spotlight on this affair has been embarrassing for Martin, who came to power in December . The controversy over the Arar case constitutes the first major crisis faced by the new prime minister. Sources in Martin's press office adamantly denied that he had any prior knowledge of the RCMP raid and brushed off allegations that the raid signalled the beginning of a campaign to intimidate journalists.
