(Sample calls and email link below!) Take action from Friday, June 25, the eve of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, to Monday, June 28 to Demand an End to Deportation to Torture Proceedings Against Ottawa refugee Mohamed (Moe) Harkat. Moe Has spent 6,774 days fighting this illegal deportation.
Can You Spare 2 Minutes to Help End this Nightmare?
Send a message now at https://iclmg.ca/stop-harkat-deportation/ and scroll down for other ways to take action.
ALSO: sign and share this petition: https://www.change.org/p/help-stop-my-husband-s-deportation-to-torture
Easy to Send Letter/Emails and Call Messages Below!
TAKING ACTION
1. Visit http://iclmg.ca/stop-harkat-deportation/ to send an excellent letter to your MP, Prime Minister Trudeau and Public Safety Bill Blair to demand that Canada Stop Mohamed Harkat's deportation to torture, and allow him to become a permanent resident of Canada so he can finally, after 25 years of suffering, get on with his life.
2. Here are suggested messages you can use in calling the Prime Minister (613-992-4211) and Bill Blair (613-995-0284) (if you're comfortable, please leave your name and where you are calling from to show that we have support from across the country!):
Message for Justin Trudeau:
"Hello. My name is ______________ and I'm calling from ______________about the case of Mohamed Harkat. He is a refugee in Canada facing deportation to torture in Algeria. Mr. Trudeau has said no one should ever be tortured. That should be true for Moe, too. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair has the power today to allow Moe to stay in Canada under a section of the refugee legislation that says "it is not contrary to the national interest" to allow him to stay. Please speak with Minister Blair, live up to your word, and make the right decision: let Moe Harkat stay in Canada. Thank you."
Message for Bill Blair
"Hello. My name is ______________ and I'm calling from ______________about the case of Mohamed Harkat. He is a refugee in Canada facing deportation to torture in Algeria. Prime Minister Trudeau has said no one should ever be tortured. That should be true for Moe, too. As Public Safety Minister, you have the power today to allow Moe to stay in Canada under a section of the refugee legislation that says "it is not contrary to the national interest" to allow him to stay. Moe’s application to stay has been on your desk for over four years. Please make the right decision: let Moe Harkat stay in Canada. Thank you.”
BACKGROUND
Justin Trudeau's government is trying to deport Mohamed Harkat, a refugee who has lived in this country for 25 years, to face torture in Algeria.
On October 26, 2017, Trudeau clearly stated: "I hope people remember to demand of governments, this one and all future governments, that nobody ever has their fundamental rights violated either through inaction or deliberate action by Canadian governments. Nobody ever deserves to be tortured. And when a Canadian government is either complicit in that or was not active enough in preventing it, there needs to be a responsibility taken."
On June 25, (the eve of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture) and through June 28, we will once again call on Trudeau to take that responsibility and end his government's efforts to deport Mohamed Harkat to torture.
We will demand, as Trudeau has called all of us to do, that he stop violating Mohamed Harkat’s fundamental rights. We will also call on Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to finally and favourably decide an application from Moe that has been sitting on his desk for over five years: it calls on Blair to grant Moe permanent resident status, as immigration legislation allows him to do so if "it is not contrary to the national interest” to let Moe stay.
The basis for these efforts to torture Mr. Harkat is a medieval star chamber process known as the secret trial security certificate. Despite violating fundamental rights, this process still exists, and continues to fail the test posed when it was first declared unconstitutional in 2007: "How can one meet a case one does not know?"
Since International Human Rights Day in 2002, when he was arrested in Ottawa without charge, without bail, and thrown into solitary confinement for over a year in conditions that were tantamount to torture, Mr. Harkat has never been allowed to see the substance of the alleged case against him, if any exists.
The whole basis of the alleged case rests on secret hearsay allegations from an informant who failed a lie detector test and an informant who was carrying on an affair with his CSIS agent handler. It's also based on decades-old summaries of alleged conversations, the original recordings and transcripts of which were destroyed, and whose accuracy and existence is impossible to verify.
The Trudeau regime is perhaps familiar with the techniques of psychological torture, also known as no-touch torture, that were perfected in Montreal at McGill University during the 1950s. Mr. Harkat is being subjected to just such a form of psychological torture now, because every moment of every day for over 17 years, he has lived with the threat of being shipped to an Algerian torture chamber.
On June 25-28, we are demanding that Trudeau end this psychological torture which consists of keeping Mr. Harkat suspended in limbo, unable to move on with his life, because he never knows when the shock of electric prods or the snap of the whip will be his daily reality.
Such a decision to end these deportation to torture proceedings would be wholly consistent with England's Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which settled this issue in 2016 when it ordered Theresa May to stop deporting Algerian nationals at risk of torture, and the Irish Supreme Court, which in 2017 blocked a deportation to Algeria because of the real risk of torture.
The Canadian government's proceedings in Mr. Harkat’s case violate legally binding domestic and international commitments under the Convention Against Torture.
One of this country's leading mental health professionals recently produced a report that concluded: “It cannot be overemphasized how stressful Mr. Harkat’s present situation is, and how the present situation is anything but benign. Mr. Harkat has a history of chronic depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress related to having been incarcerated on a Security Certificate in maximum security for 43 months, including one year in solitary confinement followed by many years of living under very strict bail conditions and facing deportation to Algeria where he believes he will be arrested, tortured and at risk of death. There are times when Mr. Harkat has experienced recurrent visions on a virtually daily basis over several months of being arrested, incarcerated, deported and tortured. Often he has been troubled by insomnia and recurrent nightmares with the same themes as his daytime visions."
We don't want one of Trudeau's successors to have to apologize for this ongoing human rights abuse years from now. The time to end it is now. We are demanding, as Trudeau called us to do, to lift the deportation to torture order and end the cruel, inhumane proceedings against Mr. Harkat.
Allow Moe to stay in Canada, and end this government’s violation of the Convention Against Torture.
This Call to Action organized by Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group