Trudeau following Harper's lead in denying justice to illegally imprisoned Muslim men

If the Liberal government is serious about combating Islamophobia, they should award long-denied justice to those in Canada's Muslim and Middle Eastern communities whose fundamental freedoms were so callously swept away by Canada's eagerness to support the U.S. "War on Terror."

Canadians are likely familiar with the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian who in 2008, after a formal inquiry, received compensation and a formal government apology for the role of Canadian officials in his 2002 rendition and year of captivity and torture in Syria. While the pain and suffering caused to Arar and his family can never be fully remedied, at least Canada took responsibility to fulfill our legal obligation to award redress.

Maher Arar's arrest, torture almost stopped by CIA, ex-spy says

A former spy has described the debate within the CIA over the arrest, rendition and torture of Canadian Maher Arar, saying multiple colleagues warned against it because they were convinced they were punishing an innocent man.

The account from former CIA officer John Kiriakou sheds new light on decade-old events that caused a public inquiry in Canada, a $10 million payout from the federal government, and unsuccessful lawsuits in the U.S.

What life looks like under a national security state

Life under a national security state is not a life. Living under such a state is simply living like a slave, or at best it is like living in a big prison, albeit one that has invisible bars. While invisible, these bars are, nevertheless, extremely constraining.

One of the pillars the national security state heavily depends on is wholesale surveillance. Total surveillance society, as predicted by George Orwell more than a half-century ago, has finally arrived. Technological advances, achieved over the past three decades, made total surveillance both possible and "affordable."

U.S. court ruling casts shadow on Omar Khadr's war crimes convictions

TORONTO - A new American court ruling in favour of Osama bin Laden's driver has cast a shadow on the validity of Omar Khadr's war crimes convictions, legal experts said Wednesday.

Even so, they said, several factors make it essentially impossible for Khadr to have his convictions before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay set aside.

Those factors include his guilty pleas, his waiver of his appeal rights, and the murky legal nature of his most serious crime: murder in violation of the law of war.

However, the ruling could potentially help him win release in Canada.

Omar Khadr is now Canada’s problem, let’s make the right choice: Maher Arar

Omar Khadr, a name familiar to every Canadian, means different things to different people. To those who vigorously opposed his repatriation, Omar Khadr is a convicted terrorist who killed an American soldier in Afghanistan. He is also the son of a known Al Qaeda supporter, not to mention the fact that his mother and sister have openly criticized Canada and questioned its values.

To his supporters, Omar Khadr fits the typical profile of a child soldier, a point of view shared by Senator Romeo Dallaire, the former general who proudly served Canada in conflict zones including Africa, where he regularly came into contact with child soldiers. To them, Omar Khadr is also a perfect example of the “collateral damage” of the “war on terror.” All along, his supporters have cited credible reports that clearly established he was subjected to torture and various types of mistreatment, including the sleep deprivation program he was subjected to before CSIS officers interrogated him in Guantanamo.

The true cost of 9/11

No one can deny that our lives as citizens of the Western world have been affected by the tragic events of 9/11, a day when close to 3,000 innocent civilians of different backgrounds have been murdered in cold blood.

What is rarely talked about is the fact that close to a million innocent civilians, including women and children, the majority of whom are Muslims, lost their lives during the illegal wars that were immediately launched in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what's worse is that the counter is still ticking.

There seems to be no agreement on the exact number of civilian causalities in both of these countries. Some studies put the number as low as 100,000 deaths and others put it as high as 2 million. One particular poll that I found worth mentioning was conducted by the British firm Opinion Research Business. The poll, conducted in 2008, asked 1,720 Iraqi adults if they had lost family members by violence since 2003. Sixteen per cent had lost one, and 5 per cent has lost two. Using the 2005 census total of 4,050,597 households in Iraq, this suggests 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion. When the margin of error is taken into account, the study finds that a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063 Iraqis have died as a result of the war.