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| We need Canadians to speak up |
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| amatullah |
| 11/13/03 at 17:16:59 |
| If you read arrar's statement then you will knowalmalki is mentioned there too. Toronto Star We need Canadians to speak up Thomas Walkom 11 September 2003 Maher Arar, the Canadian deported from New York so he could be tortured in a Syrian jail, is a living example of North America's 9/11 frenzy gone toxic. He is also a living rebuke to Canada's practice of sharing so-called intelligence information with outlaw states, be they Syria, Egypt or George W. Bush's United States. But the worst aspect of the Arar case is that it is not unique. Since Arar's return, relatives of other Canadian Muslims held and tortured in foreign dungeons have come forward to speak. They are both emboldened by Arar's forthrightness and sickened by his experience. The stories the relatives have to tell may differ in the details. But the broad strokes are chillingly similar. Like Arar, these Canadian citizens came under suspicion after Sept. 11, 2001. Like Arar, they were never charged with anything. Yet like Arar, after being fingered by Canadian security services, they ended up jailed and tortured abroad. Abdullah Almalki is one. The 32-year-old engineer, an acquaintance of Arar's, was in Malaysia with his wife's family on Jan. 22, 2002 when - at 7:30 a.m. - RCMP anti-terrorist officers executed co-ordinated raids on his home and those of relatives in London, Ont., and Ottawa. The Mounties claimed that Almalki had been exporting computer equipment to companies that eventually sold them to terrorists. The warrant for their search was sealed - that is, the justification for these suspicions was not made public. It remains sealed. No charges were laid. "It was very scary all around," recalls Almalki's brother Youssef, at the time a medical student at the University of Western Ontario in London. "I didn't know what to do." Luckily for Youssef, the university found him a lawyer. "They (the Mounties) asked me what my specialty was and did I ever get gifts from my brother. What a crazy question. Who doesn't get gifts from his family? But my lawyer said `Don't answer that. They're trying to tie you into something.'" Back in Malaysia, Almalki was sanguine. "That's just Sept. 11 craziness," he told his worried siblings. His wife Kuzimah was pregnant and didn't want to travel. So they stayed on with her parents. In the spring of 2002, their fifth child, Zack, was born. In May, Almalki flew to Syria to see his parents, who like many elderly immigrants return to their native country each year. "My mother got into the VIP section of the airport and met him," recounts Youssef. She was hugging him when they (Syrian police) took him out of her arms. She never saw him again." Back in Canada, Almalki's family didn't quite know what had happened. His mother spoke to them by telephone but guardedly. "She was afraid," says Youssef. Even once they understood the gravity of the situation, the Almalkis weren't sure what to do. "We didn't know about consular officials or anything," says Youssef. "We were afraid. People we knew in Syria said, `Oh, he's innocent; they'll let him out.' We did tell our lawyer here but were hesitant about making waves. You can't understand how afraid we were ... "It's an immigrant mentality. You worry that if you antagonize government, it will only make matters worse. That's why we didn't talk about it publicly." The family notified Canada's Foreign Affairs department. Foreign Affairs put in a routine request to the Syrians. The Syrians didn't bother to reply for eight months. Almalki has still not been allowed a consular visit. Meanwhile, the family was both frightened and ashamed. If you don't understand this, you've never been related to someone accused of a terrible crime. "Stuff like this hurts your reputation," says Youssef. "At university, even people I thought were friends started calling me Al Qaeda behind my back." However, Arar's revelation last week that he had met a severely tortured Abdullah in a Syrian prison caused the horrified Almalkis to rethink their low-key approach. Says Youssef: "My mother just sits there hearing all this about torture and asks, "What does this mean? What is this metal chair (a piece of Syrian torture equipment)?' My dad is beyond himself." Youssef is still wary of being too critical - of either the RCMP or the federal government. "I don't want to antagonize anybody," he says. "I'm still afraid that going public will make things worse, that the RCMP will smear us." He doesn't like to say it so I will. Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian citizen, is being tortured in a Syrian prison because the security services of his own country passed on unproven suspicions to Damascus - either directly or, more likely, through the U.S. This is beyond outrageous. If this is what intelligence sharing means, it must stop right now. "We need Canadians to speak up," says Youssef. "If Canada wants my brother for something, it should bring him back and try him here. "Just get him out of there." |
| Re: We need Canadians to speak up |
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| timbuktu |
| 11/14/03 at 10:10:52 |
| [slm] if Canadians will not speak up, let us all from this board send emails to the Canadian newspapers & concerned Canadian departments, & embassies. we are netizens. perhaps this may help. |
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