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This week, a French judge decided to order the release of Hassan Diab while an investigation into his case continues. It is both ironic and embarrassing to see a French judge decide to do what a Canadian judge should have done many years ago: order Hassan Diab a free man!
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What factor is common to Canada, Sweden and Denmark? The snow, perhaps? The cold weather? The social programs? Or maybe smoked salmon?
How about rendition to torture? And how about cooperation with the intelligence authorities of countries which practice torture with total impunity? These may be some of the darkest common factors shared by the three countries, ones that not everyone is aware of.
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When it comes to torture, it's hard not to look good compared to the U.S. authorities who, among other things, subjected an Algerian prisoner to ice-water baths and 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation ... before discovering he was not the person they thought he was.
OK, so there were a few screw-ups in the U.S. torture program. Stuff happens. No big deal. Here's how Dick Cheney summed it up last week: "I would do it again in a minute."
"What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States," Sen. Dianne Feinstein said last month in what was, then, her routine defence of the mass global surveillance being conducted by the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies. All that has changed now that she believes that the staff of the committee she chairs, the powerful, secretive Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was spied on and lied to by the CIA. The committee was formed after the Watergate scandal engulfed the Nixon administration. The Church Committee, led by Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church, conducted a comprehensive investigation of abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies, of everything from spying on anti-war protesters to the assassination of foreign leaders.
Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained -- sometimes at gunpoint -- and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.
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