I want to say this on this blog.
My case for asylum here in Canada had the EXACT same elements. People are frightened to be around me at all even after all these years ..
But I have never been able to access help and Amnesty was a very big factor in that.
Throughout my 14 year ordeal, I have cried bitterly that there has been no Martin Luther King on which to call. I am still crying about it TODAY.
How different my life might be IF he were still alive is impossible for me to imagine. I have been used as a "tool" to further an anti-human rights agenda by Canadian government that is for certain.
I have PLENTY to say - I say it the best I know how. But some days are just too much.
No, I did not go to the Don Jail, but lived with the "reality" that any day it might happen - that threat still exists even today, hanging over my head. Instead, I got hospitalized many, many times. Now I can't get into a hospital if I am sick no matter what I do. Part of my "punishment" for coming here and making an inland refugee claim . ..
In setting me up in the United States, warrantless wiretapping was used, illegal searches of my home were made while I was held by the US, guns planted, and all legal recourse is DENIED. My accusers are still walking around unpunished except a few who came to light were fired from the US federal payroll as the years rolled on. Sigh.
I wish I had gone to another nation for help. Way too late now.
What these innocent people face and I face is something called a "psychiatric void" which goes on for years and years. You don't know what is going to happen and you cannot plan a future.
In my case, since my experiences are SO different, I just become more and more isolated from everyone else. That is a horrible burden to carry, too. I assure you.
Just a crying shame.
I think about Leonard again, today.
I am so sorry, Leonard! I have tried SO hard to help.
And I am so sorry about what has happened to those family members who have had to suffer because Of what I did one day in 1993 .. but someone had to do it.
The JERKS need to be held to account and put on PUBLIC RECORD for what they DO. Our children need to KNOW that we will go to incredible lengths to protect their futures.
That's what adults are supposed to DO.
If you read this, by some chance, I beg - when you make your choices, think seven generations ahead, not about "today" or the money you might back or how it affects your "career" or "prestige". DO THE RIGHT THING. At least you can go to bed at night and live with your conscience and not have to resort to drugs to make you "feel better.
Someday, someday - my grandchildren and their offspring will be very proud of me. That is my current hope. Maybe my ONLY hope .
I do hope these families have a brighter future - for some of us, we become "marked" and there is no escaping long term PAIN.
Veeger
Sunday Star - TORONTO TERRORISM CASE, (2) articles.
I suspect that this TORONTO 8 was a subcategory of : 'staged for the media' non-event with no actual terrorist act ever intended to be acted out. In other words, a police-intelligence operation for the benefit of public relations and propaganda only. I am sure that the Toronto Star, a Liberal newspaper feels upset as they had the wool pulled over their eyes on this, just like everyone else.
Only the HARPER-DAY- BUSH- CHENEY alliance knew the full scope behind the planning and operations for this. But bin my mind, Clinton too as a possible.
Although the RCMP and CSIS were accomplices, the 'handler' for these unfortunates was an FBI agent who has been traced to Georgia, where he disappeared after the event.
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TORONTO TERRORISM CASE
TheStar.com | GTA |
For the families - fear and bewilderment
The arrest of an alleged Toronto terrorist ring on June 2, 2006, was initially hailed as an intelligence coup. Now the case seems far less clear-cut. Meanwhile, the family of one accused continues to wait – and suffer
Apr 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas WalkomNational Affairs ColumnistHistory will record June 2, 2006 as the day when police arrested members of what they claimed was Canada's first homegrown Islamic terrorist conspiracy. But in a modest middle-class section of Oakville, Rukhsana Gaya – then a department store cosmetics manager – remembers that day as the moment her family's life was shattered.
"The phone rang about 11 p.m. My husband answered. It was the RCMP. They said Saad (her son, then 18) had been arrestetd on terror-related charges. My husband told me and I said: `What do they mean, terrorism?' Of course, I knew about 9/11. Everyone does. But not that it would affect my family. Not that it would have anything to do with me."
In the lexicon of terror trials, Rukhsana Gaya is what is known as a family member. Her son was one of the 17 young Muslim Canadian men arrested that night in June (an 18th was picked up later) when police swooped in to forestall what they claimed was an Islamist plot to blow up buildings and behead the prime minister.
Today Saad remains jailed at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton awaiting trial on charges of terrorism and intending to cause an explosion. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
But 22 months after his arrest, the case of the Toronto 18 – which at the time was lauded by politicians as a spectacular intelligence coup – appears far less clear-cut. Three of the 18 have had their charges stayed (in effect, dropped) and been quietly released
A preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence to bring the 14 adults to trial was abruptly short-circuited by the Crown last fall, midway through the testimony of key witness Mubin Shaikh – a paid RCMP informant who has had his own brushes with the law.
The defence cried foul, and some suggested that the government was merely trying to avoid the embarrassment of having a judge throw out some charges for lack of evidence.
Indeed, a 44-year-old Mississauga man, who at the time of his arrest was portrayed as the radical firebrand of the alleged plot, has already had his charges reduced and is out on bail.
And in a document filed in court last month, a lawyer for one of the defendants claimed that it was informant Shaikh who provided the 9-mm ammunition used for target practice at an alleged terrorist training camp.
The first trial, of the only youth still facing charges, has just started. The trial of Saad and the 13 other adults may not begin for another year
For the Gaya family, all of these developments are cold comfort. They are baffled that anyone could believe that Saad, an easygoing (and, confesses his mother, somewhat lazy) first-year student at McMaster University would be involved in anything as hateful and complicated as a terrorist plot.
They are saddened that Canada, a land the Pakistani parents chose and the country in which all three of their children were born, would countenance actions that they find blatantly unfair.
Unnerved at being the centre of media attention, they agonized for months before agreeing to have their story published in the Toronto Star; they still don't want their pictures in the newspaper.
They keep referring to themselves as "normal." But they are struggling to keep afloat in a world in which normal has been turned upside down.
All have dealt with it differently. Saad's father, who asked not be identified by name and who chose not to be interviewed for this article, simply doesn't speak of what happened. An engineer, he goes to work each morning and returns home each evening to pray.
"He doesn't want to deal with the outside world,"
says
Saad's 24-year-old sister,
Beenish.
"He doesn't think there is any point. He wouldn't go to the preliminary hearing; he didn't want to see his son in that environment. Who wants to hear your son called a terrorist? He just talks to Saad when he phones."
Beenish, too, feels her life has been derailed. Before June 2, 2006, she was a highly motivated chartered-accountancy trainee working long hours at the downtown Toronto firm KPMG as she prepared for her final exams.
If she thought about terrorism at all, she says now, she saw herself as a potential victim.
"After 9/11, I thought, `If Al Qaeda strikes here, they'll hit me,'"
she says.
"I mean, I work in one of the tallest buildings in the city; I take the Lakeshore GO train. I hate Al Qaeda more than anyone."
She is Muslim. But in the days before her brother's arrest, this fact did not greatly affect her. She doesn't wear any of the clothing so often associated with Islam, such as the headscarf, burqa or veil; her friends are from all backgrounds. She takes her religion seriously, but it neither dominates nor uniquely defines her life.
She sees herself as Canadian rather than Pakistani-Canadian. And why not? She was born in Montreal, raised in Oakville, educated at McMaster University in Hamilton. Who could be more Canadian?
On the day before Saad's arrest, she and her youngest brother (now 15) were helping their father widen their driveway. Saad, she says laughing, offered to pitch in. "But he's so skinny, he couldn't shovel without standing on it."
Then came the arrest, the publicity and the subsequent media circus at the Brampton courthouse, as Muslim family members tried to make their way past the gauntlet of journalists while police officers armed with submachine guns looked on.
To someone who had always viewed herself as a normal Canadian, the experience came as a shock. Beenish might have thought she was like everyone else; the world, it seemed, disagreed.
"Suddenly you are portrayed as the other,"
she says.
"One minute you are scared of terrorists; the next minute you are the enemy."
And so the family members kept their heads down. Beenish took a leave of absence from KPMG to focus on her brother's court hearings. Rukhsana, even more devastated, was sure she'd have to leave her job.
"I was scared at the beginning to tell anyone,"
she says.
"But I didn't want to lie to my co-workers. They were all so supportive; they were wonderful."
She offered to quit. But her manager persuaded her to stay on, saying she could shift to part-time work if she wanted to devote more time to Saad's case.
Still, the effect has been paralyzing. The normally gregarious 43-year-old no longer goes out to see friends and relatives. She has been twice hospitalized since her son's arrest. During conversation, her voice will suddenly break. Sometimes, she says, she cries uncontrollably.
"Even still, at 3 a.m., I will wake up with my heart breaking."
To Saad's family, his description of life in jail was terrifying. At first, he was permitted neither a mattress nor his glasses, he later told Beenish. (A corrections ministry spokesperson, while declining to comment on Saad's case specifically, says that mattresses are sometimes removed from the cells of "special management inmates" considered to be security risks and that their spectacles may be confiscated for the same reason.)
Each time Saad was removed from his cell, shackled, to attend court or use the shower during those first few days at Maplehurst, he was hustled along by a four-member crisis intervention team in full riot gear.
Because he had initially been deemed a young offender, Saad and four other youths were soon moved to a less rigorous juvenile detention centre. That didn't last. Three months later, the Crown decided Saad had committed his alleged offences the day he turned 18. He was reclassified as an adult and moved back to Maplehurst. For the next 12 months, Saad, like the other adult detainees, was kept in solitary confinement 23 1/2 hours a day.
Today, three of the accused adults are still in solitary confinement at the Don Jail. At Maplehurst, where Saad remains, conditions have eased significantly. Now the seven still imprisoned there (four others are out on bail) are allowed to associate with one another in a common wing.
But to Rukhsana, it remains inconceivable that her child, who has still not been convicted of any crime, could be locked up for so long. Saad celebrated his 19th and 20th birthdays in jail. Unless he gets bail, he will almost certainly turn 21 there – and this before he stands trial. Her once bubbly son, she says, has become quieter, more introverted.
"They have taken away his smile,"
she says.
Now, her life and that of her family revolve around the criminal justice system. The centrepiece of each day is Saad's phone call from jail. The highlight of the week is the regular visit to Maplehurst, where Rukhsana can talk to her son through a Plexiglas barrier.
At first, says Beenish, the Gayas received virtually no help from the Muslim community, or indeed from anyone.
"Other Muslims were scared to help,"
she says
. "We know a lot of people, but when we tried to raise money (in an unsuccessful bid to have Saad released on bail), so many of them wouldn't help. They were afraid that if they did, they'd be accused of aiding terrorism."
One long-time family friend, she says, cut off all contact with the family.
Beenish approached Amnesty International. They said such cases did not fall under their ambit. She contacted local MPs. Those who agreed to see her said they could do nothing while the matter was before the courts. One (she doesn't want his name used for fear of causing offence) told her frankly that politicians did not want to put themselves on the line lest they be thought soft on terrorism. Today, she says, Muslims are less wary about speaking up on behalf of Saad and the others. But in the bleak early days, the only support the family received was from their Italian and Lebanese neighbours and a group of Toronto anti-violence activists called Homes Not Bombs.
Throughout, Beenish has borne most of the burden of dealing with the outside world. For months, she attended the on-again, off-again preliminary hearing.
She and Rukhsana became such regulars at the Brampton courthouse that some began to assume they worked there.
Even now, Beenish is the one who deals with Saad's lawyer, Paul Slansky. As well, she is trying to arrange a correspondence course for her brother. When the world comes knocking, it is she who runs interference for the family.
She is also torn about acting publicly. On the one hand, she is horrified by what she sees as the unfairness of a process in which the government appears to hold all the cards. She devotes whatever time remains from her work and court duties to a website supporting the Toronto 18. She has spoken up for the detainees at university rallies.
Yet at the same time, she is hesitant about being identified in the daily press. She is not sure she trusts what she calls the mainstream media. She fears that employers will see her as a liability rather than an asset.
"I'm starting a career,"
she says.
"I don't want it destroyed."
In interviews over several months with Beenish, and more recently with Rukhsana, the conversation keeps coming back to their sense of bewilderment.
How could this happen? They are law-abiding (Rukhsana says she has never had a parking ticket); they are patriotic Canadians; they are unfailingly polite.
When police were searching her home for evidence to use against her son (they took clothing and most of the family photographs), Rukhsana offered them tea and coffee.
Nor can the two women believe Saad was involved in anything sinister.
"How could he do what they accuse him of?" asks Rukhsana. "His friends are from all over, not just Muslims: Christians, Jews, Chinese. He was part of the interfaith dialogue at McMaster ... Everyone loves him."
Beenish says that even if her brother were inclined to violence (which, she insists, he is not), he could not have managed to involve himself in anything as complex as a terror plot without awakening the suspicions of the ever-vigilant women in his family.
She and Saad used the same computer with the same password. Rukhsana, meanwhile, kept constant watch on her eldest son.
She cooked all of his meals, sending him off to McMaster each week with 18 individually prepared and packaged breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
She did his laundry each weekend when he came home. She phoned him every day at university and routinely eavesdropped on his telephone conversations at home.
"Until he marries, I am his mother," she shrugs. "This is my job."
Ironically, given the government's assertion that Saad was involved in a religiously motivated conspiracy, his arrest has caused Beenish to draw closer to Islam. The only thing that makes sense of this madness, she says, is the Qur'an, with its message that people must struggle against adversity.
She says she now looks forward to the day when she will have enough courage to brave popular prejudice and don an Islamic headscarf.
"I call myself a Muslim and I call myself a Canadian," she says. "What is my country? Canada is my country, even though it is treating me like a second-class citizen. I'm not Pakistani. I'm Canadian. I plan to stay here and work here and marry here and raise kids here.
"I take pride in being a Canadian. What's going to happen if this (the treatment of the 18) becomes the norm?"
Rukhsana's hopes are simpler. She just wants her life and her son back.
"I have nothing to hide," she says. "My son did nothing wrong. We are an average Canadian family. We are normal."
Thomas Walkom's national affairs column runs Wednesdays and Saturdays.
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HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN
In the end, his charges were stayed. 'The authorities ruined my brother's future, his reputation and abused him physically and psychologically – all for, according to them, absolutely no reason'
Apr 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Anonymous
Special to the Star
http://www.thestar.com/Article/410678
* NOTE TO READERS - The names of the writer and people mentioned in this story have been withheld. Publishing any of these names might reveal the identity of someone who was under the age of 18 at the time he was charged in connection with the alleged terrorism plot. Under Canadian law, people charged as young offenders cannot be named or otherwise identified.
A time comes when silence is betrayal. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's been nearly two years since the raid on our house, since the day they took my brother and another relative. Since that day, my family and I have lived in silence. It's an emotional topic for me and talking about it means reliving that pain all over again. But I feel obliged to let Canadians know about our experience and what we continue to experience each and every single day.
It was June 2, 2006 – around 11 p.m. That night was a nightmare for me and my family. Earlier that day, a relative was arrested while coming home after grocery shopping. We sat at home, in shock, wondering what had just happened. None of us shed a tear, I guess out of sheer disbelief. It was getting late, and my other brother wasn't home yet. He'd been out with his friends. So my mother and I went out looking for him. We were just around the corner of our house when a pack of cars stopped at the end of the street and the SWAT team came running towards our house pointing guns at us. As soon as we got inside, they broke in, all the while yelling at us, asking us all to come down to the front door.
One by one they called us out of the house to be searched. My dad was the first to go. He had been in such a shock that after he'd heard about our relative's arrest, he'd gone back to his room and started working on his business files. And when he came down, he'd brought his papers and pen with him to the door. One of the officers glanced at the papers and pen in his hands and yelled at him: "DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS RIGHT NOW!" And with all those guns pointing at us I thought to myself, what were they expecting my father to do? Hit them with a pen? They pulled my dad by his collar and he tripped. I asked them to go easy on my father because he was already in a state of shock. Their reply made me feel sick to my stomach. They said: "We know that already, that's what we have the ambulance for."
Then they handcuffed him and took him for questioning, and we didn't see him for the next couple of hours. They searched us all and then had us wait outside in the rain with babies in our arms. They waited for my brother to come home, and when he did they put him in a car and took him. We didn't know where he was taken and what had happened to him. They finally told us that they had actually arrested him. We spent the night at our neighbours'. The next morning we received a call from my brother; he told us he was being held at a police station. I asked him how he was and he told me not to worry, but I could hear the quiver in his voice. I knew he was only trying to be strong so as not to hurt us.
The drive to the courthouse was, again, like nothing I had ever experienced before. At first, we didn't even know how to get to the Brampton courthouse. It's actually a bit humorous how we tried to find our way to court. We saw helicopters above our car and simply decided to follow their lead, and that landed us right at the courthouse. The moment we got out of the car we were surrounded by swarms of media, cameras and microphones shoved in our faces. Despite us asking them to leave us alone, they continued to hassle us until we had finally got in.
But our ordeal didn't end with that. After being searched and sniffed by dogs, we were asked to wait in a long line of people to get into the courtroom. They were allowing only 50 people inside, and most of the people ahead of us were non-family members.
I remember seeing my brother in the courtroom, shackled and handcuffed with the other accused. They were escorted in groups of five. You could even hear the rattling of the chains before they entered the courtroom. I remember seeing them all with weak smiles reassuring their families that they were all right when they really weren't, and that we – the families – had to be strong. Even these minor attempts to reassure us were stopped by the guards. They made sure that the accused made no eye contact or had any sort of communication with their families. The guards were intimidating. It's like they were implicitly telling us that our brothers were now under their control. I recall a relative telling me once about his first night at Maplehurst prison. He said the officers had dragged him by his neck and choked him until he couldn't breathe and then one of them said to him: "I own you now. You do what I say. You eat when I say you eat, you sleep when I say you sleep and you sh-- when I say you sh--." This was repeated with all of them at Maplehurst.
My brother shared with me his anguish on his first night. He said:
"When I got out of the car I was surrounded by police dogs, SWAT team, and the bright camera flashes and the reporters screaming. I went inside and I was strip-searched. For the first time in my life I felt so humiliated. Then I was put in a cell for about five hours or so till it was early morning and the whole night I couldn't sleep because of the cold concrete bench, and there was no water so I was really thirsty. But when I'd ask for water or my sweater back so that at least I could sleep or something, they'd just say, `Its not a f-----n' hotel.'"
He told me how the thing he hated the most was dealing with the guards. They would throw him on the ground, shackle him and handcuff him and then make him crawl all the way to his cell. For the first two days they had no water, no toilet paper, just a cold cell room with a concrete bench and no pillows or blanket. The windows were covered so that they couldn't see outside the door or window.
He was kept in solitary confinement for almost three months until he was released on bail under strict conditions. When I was preparing this article, I had asked my brother to write about how he felt when he was released on bail and what would he want people to know.
He wrote: "When I was released I was so happy to be back with my family but the house arrest conditions that were put on me didn't make it any different. That went on for a year and in that time I had given my family a very hard time. I couldn't go to sleep at night without taking my anti-depressants. I couldn't talk to someone for more than half an hour without losing my temper over something small. I couldn't have more than three people around me because it'd get hard for me to breathe. I'd get angry at something I wouldn't even remember but then I'd just black out and 20 minutes later there would be broken furniture around me.
"Yes I have seen the psychiatrist many times and I was told that I have post-traumatic stress syndrome and I was prescribed anti-depressants. I didn't go through any treatment simply because I was told that whatever I am going through will stop as soon as I was out on bail. Now I'm released from bail and I barely have any conditions but nothing much has changed. I'm still not even close to being the same person as I was before the arrest. I'm a completely different man, someone who keeps asking himself if he's really gone crazy ... I suffer from memory loss sometimes.
"After I came out from jail a lot of my old friends came up to me and I barely remembered any of them. And that was something that really scared me because I had been to school with these people. A lot of things have changed in me and I still get nightmares about the times I was inside. I still have my anger problems and sleeping disorder. People don't look at me as they'd look at a normal person. Either they are really scared of me, or they feel really sorry for me that they end up looking at me like I'm just a crazy person."
My other relative continues to suffer in solitary confinement along with two of the other accused. According to a study by the Correctional Services of Canada, those who went through enforced segregation for 60 days suffered from "poorer mental health and psychological functioning."
The three detainees at the Don Jail have now spent more than 600 days in solitary confinement.
I don't understand why they were treated like that and why the young men at Maplehurst and the Don Jail continue to be treated as though they've already been convicted. Why are they deprived of basic rights that are given to every other inmate? I wonder if it's because of their faith.
The accused, my relatives included, have suffered through obvious forms of degradation, humiliation, discrimination, oppression and exploitation by the media and law enforcement. And eventually, in the case of my brother, he was let go with all his charges stayed.
You and I live in a country that is supposed to be the fortress of education, freedom, justice, democracy and all those other pretty-sounding words. And yet the authorities ruined my brother's future, his reputation and abused him physically and psychologically – all for, according to them, absolutely no reason.
They say it's for no reason, but those of us close to the situation know very well what the reason was. My brother was a pawn used in the game of exploiting the public's fear and beating the drums of Islamophobia.
My other relative's solitary confinement does not affect only him but is also taking a toll on his wife and children. A couple of weeks ago, a 3-year old relative had come home from visiting her father, and said to her grandmother: "I think I've lost my daddy." When her grandmother asked her why she'd think such a thing, she replied: "Because he can't touch me." It broke my heart when I heard that. This is injustice not only against my relative but his kids. It's unfair to deprive a child of her father's touch. They're only allowed to meet with a Plexiglass screen between them, and she cries during every visit when it's time for her father to leave.
These men deserve the same rights as every other inmate. They deserve the right to be presumed innocent.
