Canadian Intelligence Service Giving False Assurances

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been giving false assurances to the government that it can guarantee the intelligence it receives from foreign agencies is not obtained by torture, a review committee said.

"CSIS was not in a position to provide such an absolute assurance" and should stop saying so, the Security Intelligence Review Committee said in its report to Parliament yesterday.

The issue came to light because SIRC, an independent watchdog established by Parliament, wanted to know more about the hundreds of intelligence-sharing agreements CSIS has with foreign services after U.S. allies deported Canadian Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured. SIRC discovered that CSIS had been telling the Department of Foreign Affairs and ministers for years that it would scrutinize the information for other countries.

CSIS reported it would "closely scrutinize the content of the information provided to, or received from, a foreign agency in order to ensure that none of the information sent to, or received from, that agency is used in the commission of, or was obtained as a result of, acts that could be regarded as human rights violations."

This guarantee was provided each time CSIS proposed entering into a new intelligence-sharing agreement.

In fact, the review committee said, CSIS "is rarely in a position to determine how information that went to a foreign agency is used, or how information it receives was obtained."

The committee, headed by former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon, said CSIS must rely on intelligence received from foreign partners. The report does not say what CSIS should do, however, if it receives information it believes was obtained under torture.

Canada's most important intelligence-sharing arrangements, particularly in the counterterrorism field, are with the United States. The U.S. administration has argued that it has the wartime right to use harsh military-intelligence interrogation techniques that human-rights groups say cross the line and are torture.

At various times Canada has also co-operated with Syria, whose government imprisoned and tortured Mr. Arar and three other Canadian Muslim men, an independent fact-finder reported last week.

The four say their torturers asked them questions based on information that they suspect came from Canadian government sources.

http://circ.jmellon.com/docs/view.asp?id=853