Archive for June 2007

Benamar Benatta’s Story in Brief

Mr. Benatta is a Convention refugee from Algeria. After coming to the Canadian border to claim refugee status on September 5, 2001, he was detained by Canadian officials pending inquiries into his identity.

On the evening of September 12, 2001, Mr. Benatta was placed in the back of a car, driven over the border and handed to U.S. officials for investigation. This transfer took place without the benefit of a hearing on the merits of his refugee claim and without the benefit of counsel. Mr. Benatta was not told where he was going or why. He was terrified.

Mr. Benatta was held in a high-security wing of the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, where he was accused of being a suspect in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Despite being cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities by the F.B.I. by November 2001, Mr. Benatta spent nearly five years in detention in the U.S. He was held in conditions that the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found could be described as torture and suffered abuse that is well-documented by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Canadian officials finally arranged for his return to Canada in July 2006. Mr. Benatta was granted refugee status in Canada in November 2007, and he is currently a permanent resident of Canada.

Mr. Benatta and members of the Benatta Coalition for a Public Review have long sought answers about the Government of Canada’s involvement in what happened to Mr. Benatta. The Benatta Coalition members called on the Government to conduct a public review into the circumstances of his case, on how he came to be handed over to U.S. officials following the events of September 11, 2001.

On April 19, 2007, then Minister for Public Safety, the Honourable Stockwell Day, announced in the House of Commons that Mr. Benatta would be given an “appeal” in his case. Such “appeal” never transpired and Mr. Benatta continues to seek justice, and to hold the government officials accountable for their illegal actions.

Benatta and Nicole (his lawyer) featured on Caravan.

Interview with Benamar Benatta and his lawyer; featured on Canada’s “Caravan”.

Thanks to Ben and also Nicole, they mentioned this site’s URL.

Stay tuned because I’d like to include the entire hour long show. Right now though, I just wanted to post the part of the show that related to Ben.

Feel free to comment on what you thought of the show.

We are also tossing our ideas to and fro; as it pertains to getting registered members to participate in discussions. But there are many ways you can help. And we think we may have found a way in which everyone (not solely members of this site, but other as well) can help out.

Stay tuned.

Five years lost over “sham” charges

Five years lost over “sham” charges

Intelligent reader response.

Article from August 2006 by n. mallory

Though terrible, the Sept. 11 attacks “do not constitute an acceptable basis for abandoning our constitutional principles and rule of law by adopting an ‘end justifies the means’ philosophy,” Schroeder wrote.

Interesting article from blogger n. mallory.

Other highlights include:

Prison guards… dispensed humiliation in steady doses – rapping on his cell door every half hour to interrupt his sleep, stepping on his leg shackles hard enough to scar his ankles, locking him in an outdoor exercise cage despite freezing temperatures, conducting arbitrary strip searches.

and:

His Kafkaesque journey through the American justice system concluded July 20 when a deal was finalized for his return to Canada. In the words of his lawyer, the idea was to “turn back the clock” to when he first crossed the border.

But time did not stand still for Benatta: The clock ran for 1,780 days. The man detained at 27 was now 32.

Presently, re this site, I am still working on some minor technical things. (Which by the way I hope our hosting company has fixed whatever issue that was causing this site to disappear intermittently. Apologies to everyone who tried to visit it and wound up Nowhere.)

I made the first post “sticky” so it should remain static while allowing us to post away without molesting the first post. I guess we’ll see if it works after this is posted.

Ruschia