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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Feds unaware of role of Canadian in torture

By: Stephen Thorne

Posted: 02/7/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

OTTAWA -- The federal government has "no knowledge" that a Canadian took part in the 2002 torture and interrogation of a suspected terrorist in Morocco, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Friday.

The lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, a British national who was arrested in Pakistan and is now at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says his client refused to talk to his American interrogators before a woman calling herself "Sarah the Canadian" stepped in.

Mohamed's diary says the woman told him the Americans were getting ready to torture him if he didn't co-operate. The woman -- whom Mohamed says he never believed was Canadian -- left and the Briton says he was tortured.

"The Government of Canada has in the past objected strongly in instances where foreign agents claimed alleged links to Canada," Cannon said in a brief statement during question period in the Commons.

New Democrat MP Paul Dewar, who questioned Cannon on the story -- which first surfaced several years ago -- said he trusts the interrogator wasn't actually a Canadian.

"But in light of the fact that this was our reputation on the international stage being sullied, I want to know what the government has done to make sure that our reputation is actually solid here," Dewar told reporters.

"Because when governments do this they're using us as an instrument for their nefarious activities, in this case torture. I mean, these are very serious allegations."

He said he wants an investigation into the matter. He also suggested Prime Minister Stephen Harper raise the issue with Barack Obama when the newly minted U.S. president visits Ottawa on Feb. 19.

Mohamed's lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, says his client was subjected to "absolutely brutal, horrific torture and anyone who played a role in that, big or small, has to answer criminally and morally."

In documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington in January 2006, Katznelson wrote that Mohamed, a suspected al-Qaida agent, was tortured during interrogations conducted by FBI agents in Pakistan and Morocco.

Pakistani soldiers in Karachi hung him up by his wrists for a week, letting him down just twice a day to go to the bathroom, the lawyer wrote. He said they beat him with a leather strap and at one stage pressed a semi-automatic rifle into his chest.

"I knew I was going to die," Mohamed said. "He stood like that for five minutes."

He said he was taken to Islamabad before he was rendered to Morocco, where the Moroccan agents who tortured and interrogated him said they were acting on the Americans' behalf.

"Sarah" claimed to be an "impartial third party" from Canada and warned him in a blasé manner: "If you don't talk to me, then the Americans are getting ready to carry out the torture. They're going to electrocute you, beat you and rape you."

Mohamed, whom British authorities had already cleared, told them he had nothing to say. He was subsequently held down and beaten for hours by masked men. The beatings and torture went on for more than 18 months, he said.

"They'd ask me a question," he said in his diary. "I'd say one thing. They'd say it was a lie. I'd say another. They'd say it was a lie. I could not work out what they wanted to hear.

"They'd say there's this guy who says you're the big man in al-Qaida. I'd say it's a lie. They'd say it's true. They'd torture me. I'd say, OK it's true. They'd say, OK, tell us more. I'd say, I don't know more. Then they'd torture me again."

Mohamed said they cut him repeatedly with razor blades, including his genitals, subjected him to loud rock music non-stop and doped him.

In his book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, Stephen Grey writes that the parts of Mohamed's story that can be verified check out.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 7, 2009 A13

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