PRESS
RELEASE
(pour la
version française cliquetez ici)
December 6, 2004
Canada blocks torture charges against Bush
The
Canadian government used a claim of diplomatic immunity Monday to
block torture charges laid under the Canadian Criminal Code against
President George W. Bush. The charges had been laid by Gail Davidson
of LAW [Lawyers against the War] on the occasion of Bush’s visit to
Canada on November 30. They concerned the well-known abuses at Abu
Ghraib prison, photos of which shocked the world earlier this year, as
well as similar abuses at Guantánamo Bay that have emerged more
recently. On behalf of LAW, Davidson was seeking to fix a date for a
hearing into the charges and came armed with evidence, but Judge
William Kitchen acceded to the Attorney General’s objections and
declared the charges ‘a nullity’.
“Of
course, they’re not a nullity”, said Professor Michael Mandel,
co-chair of LAW, who criticized the decision as “irregular in
procedure and wrong in substance.” “These charges were properly laid
and backed up by powerful evidence. The government didn’t deny that
evidence because it couldn’t deny it. Diplomatic immunity is purely
procedural. It doesn’t affect the validity of the charges, only
whether they can be proceeded with, for the time being, in a foreign
court, in this case a Canadian court. Even if Bush has immunity, it’s
only temporary and it won’t shield him or anyone in his administration
from Canadian law, or any other law, when they leave office. That the
Canadian government would try to hush this up by hiding Bush behind
diplomatic immunity was only to be expected. Paul Martin invited Bush
here to ingratiate himself with the President, despite the President’s
crimes against our laws and against international law, despite even
his inadmissibility as a war criminal under Canada’s immigration laws
– above all, despite the unending human disaster the President’s
illegal ‘war of choice’ has brought to the people of Iraq.”
Vancouver
lawyer Gail Davidson, who laid the charges, said “We have a lot of
objections to the way these charges were handled. We can’t see the
legal basis for sealing the courtroom and excluding the press and the
public. We think the claim of immunity was premature and exaggerated,
and the quashing of the charges not authorized by the law. We are
considering our options, including an appeal of the decision. One
thing we will do for sure is to pursue similar charges in Germany as
part of the prosecution launched there by the American Center for
Constitutional Rights. There is good reason to believe that the German
authorities will show more backbone than the government of Canada in
the face of the Bush administration’s trashing of international human
rights law.”
PRESS
RELEASE
(pour la
version française cliquetez ici)
December 2, 2004
Hearing December 6th
in Canadian torture charges against US President Bush
The charges were laid against Bush by LAW, on November 30th 2004,
during Bush's visit to Canada and concern the well known abuses of
prisoners held by US Armed Forces in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and
the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba. The charges come under a section of
the Canadian Criminal Code enacted to implement the U.N. Convention
against Torture, ratified by Canada in 1987 and the United States in
1994.
Issues yet to be decided include the need for the Attorney General of
Canada's consent for the prosecution of a non-citizen, and the
question of Bush's immunity as a foreign Head of State.
PRESS
RELEASE
(pour la
version française cliquetez ici)
November 30, 2004
Canadian lawyers
charge Bush with torture
Michael Mandel, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University,
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3. Tel: 416 736-5039, Fax:
416-736-5736, Email:
MMandel@osgoode.yorku.ca
Gail Davidson, Tel: 604 738 0338; Fax: 604 736 1175, Email:
law@portal.ca
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