From pacificfreepress.com
by C. L. Cook
Last week, Canadian authorities decided to turn over Canadian citizen Marc Emery to United States of America drug warriors in answer to spurious charges that government made against Emery’s mail-order marijuana seed selling activities from his home base in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Marc Emery - Awaiting five year sentence in U.S. prison
Emery is now in Canadian custody awaiting the thirty day appeal window for the minister’s responsible signature to toss him over the border. Ian Mulgrew, of the conservative Canwest Global media chain wrote a worthy account by way of background on this abrogation of justice. Here’s the link to Mulgrew’s piece. Though the latest Canadian sacrificed to the maw of American “Justice,” Emery is certainly not the first. In fact, Canada has yet to refuse extradition of any but Vietnam era draft dodgers to the United States, despite that country’s long and inglorious record of cooked cases, forced “confessions,” and its grossly misapplied “plea-bargain” system that routinely imprisons innocents who, seeing no way to defend themselves against the power of the State, accept sentences lesser than the outrageously excessive “mandatory minimum” punishments prosecutors promise.
Another judicial ploy experienced by those caught up in the grotesquely arcane and patently unjust justice system south is the threat of arrest of friends and especially partners for failure to “confess” in open court. In Emery’s case, two of his co-accused were treated lightly and spared the trip to the lower 48.
It was Marc Emery, the infamously political ‘Prince of Pot,’ they really wanted.
Yes, Emery’s crime is a distinctly political one. He has vociferously opposed the marijuana prohibition in Canada and the U.S. for many years, publishing Cannabis Culture, a magazine extolling the virtue of the “sacred herb” and denouncing its detractors, and sent his seed catalogue to politicians of all stripes, on both sides of the border. He also launched Pot-TV, a web-based program covering both the political and social debate around marijuana, and serves as leader of the Marijuana Party in British Columbia, (a position he’s promised to maintain from within the penitentiary).
So far, there is no indication the Canadian government recognizes the political nature of the prosecution of Marc Emery, (and there’s little hope a Harper administration will), but that failure is not unusual given the dismal history of cross-border legal cooperation practiced by both ruling parties in parliament.
Not Freeing Leonard Peltier
Last August, the parole board hearing for Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement activist sent up for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents killed during a shoot-out at the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, refused his appeal for release. The 65 year-old Peltier has served more than thirty years for the crime, maintaining his innocence throughout.
Leonard Peltier – 32 years and waiting for justice in U.S. prison
As a man on the lam arrested in Canada in the early Seventies, Peltier pointed up the political nature of the charges. The fact of false confessions secured through coercion, bribes, and what we might call today, “enhanced interrogation” of witnesses against Peltier became apparent upon inspecting the FBI extradition request for him, but the Liberal government of the day went along and sent Leonard down the road and up the river anyway.
Leonard Peltier’s next parole hearing is scheduled for 2024, and like fellow political prisoner, activist and writer Mumia Abu Jamal, framed up for the death of a police officer in Philadelphia more than thirty years ago, Peltier can expect no better than the justice he has so far received from the system.
On June 26, 2007, fellow AIM activist John Graham turned himself in to Canadian authorities for extradition processing to the United States, ostensibly to stand trial for abetting the murder of fellow AIM activist, Anna Mae Aquash in regards to the case of the killing of same said FBI agents Leonard Peltier has spent three decades incarcerated for.
It is widely believed, Anna Mae was actually killed by either the FBI itself, or ‘GOON’ agents working on its behalf, for her failure to go along with the frame-up being constructed for Leonard Peltier.
By the time the Graham extradition orders were received in Canada, the blatant FBI fabrications of “evidence” delivered to Canadian authorities in both the Aquash and Peltier cases was well known, but Graham was dutifully handed over, (actually whisked out of the country in contradiction to promises made to family he would be allowed the thirty days stay in Canada Emery now enjoys, for fear of demonstrations at the Vancouver processing jail).
John Graham – Two years and waiting for trial in U.S. prison
Two years later, John Graham has yet to have his case heard. Two years away from his family, trapped in a foreign country famous for its racist disregard for the first “Americans,” with little hope of a fair trial, if precedent is any indicator.
Further Degradations
Canada has consistently supported the U.S. wars against both its foreign and domestic enemies. The enthusiasm of that support has waxed and waned with the political expediencies of the day in Ottawa, but U.S. legislators can rest easy in the knowledge their good cousins north will not offer meaningful resistance to the excesses of the exercising of American power either at home or abroad.
Mahar Arar – Abandoned to torture in Syrian prison
In recent years, this willingness on the part of Canadian authorities to go along has become more pronounced, the Harper regime moving aggressively to adopt U.S. foreign and domestic policies regardless of the disastrous effects these have meant for people both within the United States and without.
Whereas membership may hold privileged for some nationalities, (and certain credit card customers) for Canadians in need of their nation’s protection from foreign friends and allies alike, citizenship seemingly holds few benefits.
The horror stories of Canadians Maher Arar, not only abandoned by his government, but effectively fed to the lions by it, and child soldier and Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay denizen, Omar Khadr are just two instances where being a subject of Canadian government ministrations is not only less than helpful in times of distress, but downright dangerous.
Omar Khadr – 15 year old abandoned for seven years
in Camp X-Ray prison, where he remains yet
Then, there is the way Canadians kidnapped overseas can expect to be given up for lost in their most dire moments of needed State interdiction.
Quiet Diplomacy
On August 23, 2008 freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and her photojournalist companion, Australian Nigel Brennan were kidnapped outside Mogadishu, Somalia. A group calling itself the ‘Mujahideen in Somalia’ claimed responsibility, calling for an end to foreign aggression against Somalia, (likely referring to the program of destabilization and regime change launched by George W. Bush’s administration in 2006 and continuing today to inflict catastrophic suffering for the people in Somalia and neighbouring countries).
Subsequent imprecations for a pay-off of 2.5 million dollars, down from an initial demand of 5 million, for the return of the pair has fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa and Canberra. Reminiscent of Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher and Teflon Ron Reagan’s famous refusals to do business with terrorists in the 1980’s, today the “tough luck you got kidnapped” approach goes by the kinder, gentler phrase of ‘Quite Diplomacy,’ wherein family and friends of the victims are encouraged to dig a hole in the sand for which to place their heads and hopes of the release of their loved ones in.
Journalists too are encouraged to follow suit both through pressures placed on State and corporate news producers and the associations freelance “loose cannons” may belong to.
The result of all this diplomacy on the QT for Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan to date, after two years in what one can only imagine to be unimaginable circumstances, has been zero. And, there is no indication that either the Canadian or Australian governments are doing anything to further the release of the two hapless journalists today.
Amanda Lindhout – Abandoned to unknown kidnappers
in Somalia for 14 months and counting
Last year, the Canadian news magazine Macleans ran a lengthy piece on Amanda Lindhout’s abduction, where they quoted Kelly Barker, a friend from Lindhout’s native Alberta saying;
“I don’t know why she decided to go to Somalia. I think she must have just heard about the refugees there and thought, ‘Man, I should really go tell a story on this.’”
In May, Macleans published a sparse, three paragraphs of Michael Petrou’s progress report on the Lindhout file, citing the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT) refusal to comment on the case and their failure to either seek or interview the Somali colleague, Abdifatah Mohammad Elmi taken prisoner with Lindhout, now free and living in Kenya.
Of a possible interview with Elmi, Petrou reports DFAIT seemingly believed it “wouldn’t be useful or appropriate.”
It’s a sentiment that could well summarize both the department and the Canadian government’s willingness to allow Canadians be sacrificed on the altar of policies placing more importance on relations with their international partners than on the people they swear to serve.
Resources
Petrou
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/05/25/canadas-department-of-foreign-affairs-
pursuing-all-appropriate-channels-to-protect-canadians-as-long-as-it-doesnt-involve-leaving-the-embassy-compound/
Amanda Lindhout
http://www.amandalindhout.com/
Peltier
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/newsroom.htm
Mumia Abu Jamal
http://www.freemumia.com/
john Graham
http://www.grahamdefense.org/index.htm
Maher Arar
http://www.maherarar.ca/
Marc Emery
http://marcemery.ca/
Omar Khadr
http://pacificfreepress.com/search/omar%20khadr.html?ordering=newest&searchphrase=all
