The Abdelrazik Affair: Timing Is Everything

While I don’t have too much to write about on this today, Paul Koring has, as usual, the jump on the latest shocking development. The short and sweet is that only days after the Harper government conceded they will bring Abousfian Abdelrazik back from Sudan, complying with Justice Zinn’s federal court order, an “unsourced narrative” has published an assertion of Mr.Abdelrazik’s former ties to terrorism on the U.N. blacklist website.

Although Paul Koring settles this new information rather quickly, the timing is rather disturbing. Just who, or what agency, is continuing to smear Mr.Abdelrazik long after he’s been cleared by intelligence agencies of ties to terrorism?

The U.N. notice isn’t exactly “news”, but it’s most definitely something that many people don’t know. The information was originally published in 2006 when the United States added him to the U.N. Security Council’s 1267 terrorist blacklist. It’s beginning to make more and more sense as the pieces come together. The U.S. obtained Mr.Abdelrazik’s name during a waterboarding confession of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda leader who was waterboard tortured over 80 times. It’s unclear whether he named Mr.Abdelrazik, or whether the U.S. volunteered the name, but he was added to the no-fly list, a blacklist that requires no evidence to get named to.

It would now appear that Canadian officials were in contact with the Americans who wanted to extradite Mr.Abdelrazik to the U.S. to face charges of terrorism there. Whether he would have faced charges there or not remains unclear; according to a memo from 2006, they didn’t have enough evidence at the time. Because only a member of the security council could get him blacklisted, it appears certain now that it was the United States.

One of the shocking paragraphs in Mr.Koring’s article:

Previous narratives have been posted in bunches after all 15 members of the Security Council approved them. By Monday’s solo posting of the accusations against Mr. Abdelrazik was unprecedented, and Mr. Hameed suggested it reflected political interference.

What details will continue to emerge from this case may yet prove to be as surprising as the last.

Iraq Invasion: Plan B

An interesting, and rather underreported article floating around on the internet from the Guardian, says that the Bush-Blair governments, in dealing with the buildup to the Iraq war, had a contingency plan for weapons inspectors not finding weapons of mass destruction. According to a memo, written on 31 January 2003, the two nations contemplated alternative scenarios that might trigger a second U.N. resolution that would legitimize military action.

President Bush told Prime Minister Blair that if they flew reconnaissance aircraft painted in United Nations colours over Iraq with fighter escorts and were fired upon by Saddam’s troops, that would put Iraq in contravention of U.N. resolutions. President Bush was “hopeful” that an Iraqi defector would step forward to produce evidence of the weapons program, or that someone would assassinate Saddam. But even so, the memo says that President Bush confirmed he was going with or without U.N. approval, and that Tony Blair was behind the President.

A fascinating piece of history…

Hints of Nixon In B.C. Liberal Rail Affair

David Basi right, walks with his lawyer Michael Bolton. Photo: Debra Brash, Times Colonist

The provincial Liberal government of B.C., coming off their recent victory over the NDP in the May election, managed to ignore the B.C. Rail allegations during the campaign. Amazingly enough, everybody else ignored it as well, including the opposition. In fact, it’s an issue that seems to have very little import to British Columbians at all. Only the Globe and Mail’s Mark Hume bothered to show up for yesterday’s hearing to learn that defence lawyers for David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi say recent revelations will make it impossible to prove their innocence of corruption charges related to the sale of BC Rail.

With echoes of Rose Mary Woods, the secretary under Nixon who erased an incriminating White House tape recording following the Watergate break and enter, a B.C. Supreme Court has heard that the province of B.C. has erased emails from 2001-2005. That is a truly massive gap of information in the record, and even defies the laws that electronic government documents must be held for at least seven years. Lawyers for the accused say that the emails pertaining to the political corruption case arising from the sale of B.C. rail are simply vanished.

As Robin Mathews wrote in December, this isn’t merely a criminal case involving the robbery of a gas station.

This is a case that directly involves the lives of the people of British Columbia. Their possession – BC Rail – has been shadily (and, perhaps, stupidly and criminally) handed away. Personnel of their provincial government employed by cabinet have been accused of fraud and breach of trust in that matter. And – as regrettable as it must be to say so – huge suspicion of wrong-doing clings to the premier, Gordon Campbell, and to other members of his cabinet. This is a case being pursued at a time when the investigating body and the one which has been involved with the laying of charges is an RCMP with a hugely damaged reputation.

The timing could not be worse for a legal process already fraught with endless delays. An application filed two weeks ago by defence lawyers was seeking the contents of email records from several members of cabinet, executives, and of Premier Gordon Campbell himself, from June 2001 to 2005. The fact that this exact time period has been flushed down the memory hole certainly has to rank as one of the most odious developments in this case since it was first revealed that the RCMP raided B.C. legislature offices with search warrants.

Lawyers representing the government, including the Premier’s office and cabinet, say that the emails are not recoverable. Not only could the material not be found during a search, it had been purged from the data system, leaving no traces behind. The court is not even obligated to assist in the mysterious disappearance of the electronic records, since the defence team needs to establish in court that such materials would be relevant. Court has adjourned until tomorrow morning, when defence will seek cross examination of the 33 individuals served affidavits for their electronic records, to ask questions about the deletions. But Justice Bennett has given a time limit of September 4.

The main delays in this case have been an inability to get disclosure of documents and information to the defence counsel. In the Basi-Virk case, this time delay could weigh heavily on the decision to simply throw the matter out of court, leaving taxpayers forever wondering what really happened. Thanks to the disappearance of vital emails during the time period of the alleged corruption charges, we may never find out.

“A Culture Of Secrecy On Parliament Hill”

Federal information commissioner Robert Marleau

The Toronto Star has released two good articles in the past few days, both of which describe an interesting inside look at Ottawa’s political and financial affairs. The first is based on a new series of MP expenses that delves into the costly $128 million-a-year in personal and office expenses, an amount that has risen by 42% in less than a decade. While more transparency measures for accounting are being applied in countries throughout the world right now, such as in Great Britain and the United States, our own nation has been reluctant to disclose the expenses that we, the public, pay for.

The main problem is that while we know the actual cost, we’re not allowed to see how it was spent. Of 37 MPs contacted by the Toronto Star for the series, only four agreed to disclose specific information about their expenses. That’s not entirely surprising in and of itself. It’s understandable that politicians don’t want to be involved in some kind of “gotcha” article on spending irregularities. But it does make one wonder why we need to even ask in the first place. Detailed line items of every expense should be as accessible to citizens as finding out how many goals Daniel Sedin scored for the Vancouver Canucks last year. It is, after all, just a number. Any expenses have already been approved by a multi-partisan committee of the House of Commons anyway:

“I would remind you that for expenses to be approved, receipts need to be submitted to the House of Commons,” said Zachary Healy, a Conservative party spokesman. “Receipts have been provided for all expenses, and they have been disclosed according to the rules currently in place,” said Karl Bélanger, the senior press secretary to NDP Leader Jack Layton.

“If an expense does not meet the guidelines … it is refused,” said an aide to Liberal MP Glen Pearson.

Even the Bloc Québécois, which said weeks ago that it had no fear of opening its expense claims for a look-see by the auditor general, dismissed requests for assistance and transparency.

On the surface, the process seems relatively fair. A committee of eight MPs, four from the government and four from the opposition, approve receipts. Across partisan lines, people spoke favourably of the system. But that still leaves a lot of questions as to how current expenses for “personal and office” has risen 42% since fiscal 2000-01. We can’t know, because we’re not allowed to know. John Reynolds, a former Conservative MP, said we don’t need to know either, because it would only feed a “scandal-obsessed media.”

“I don’t think it’s important that somebody knows what somebody eats for their supper. It then becomes a story. So-and-so eats a steak and somebody else lives on a hamburger. … There are people who like that stuff and that’s why the National Enquirer sells so well.”

One of the most interesting parts of the article is the actual expense total listed for the 33 MPs who refused to provide information to the Star. Winnipeg Conservative Steven Fletcher, who is quadriplegic, understandably expensed out at the highest: $314,542. The lowest? Gilles Duceppe and Scott Reid: a twoonie.

The second article is also a good read. It describes how the failing transparency in government is attributed to a general apathy. A self-perpetuating cycle, the less we care, the less politicians feel the need to divulge information. The less information divulged, the less informed we become, et cetera, et cetera. There’s quite a bit I disagree with, such as the argument that eliminating the Court Challenges Program was based on a Prime Minister “that makes his own rules”, and several other vague criticisms specific to the Conservative Party. But the end does ring true: “Canadians know too little about the institutions that govern them.”

h/t to Jack’s Newswatch