On Oct. 23, 2010, Canada and the United States exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing in principle to the idea that Omar Khadr should be transferred to the Canadian correctional system after serving one more year in U.S. custody (he’d served eight already).
On Sept. 29, 2012, Omar Khadr came back to Canada.
I find it difficult to believe it could take two years to process paperwork about anything, never mind settling the already determined fate of a prisoner who was well known to both sides. Then again, I’ve never worked in government. But in fact, it seems that it didn’t take two years to process the paperwork. We know that by October, 2011, when Khadr’s year in U.S. custody was up, the Correctional Service of Canada had assessed his request for a transfer and handed the file over to Vic Toews’ public safety department.
That’s confirmed in a batch of heavily redacted documents I got in the mail this week, in response to an Access to Information request. I made the request back in April, after my questions to a spokesperson for the public safety department went unanswered.
Many of the 518 pages I received this week are useless because so much is blacked out — including many of the dates when paperwork moved from one government office to another. But some parts survive, including parts of a “memorandum to the minister” dated Oct. 7, 2011 — nearly a year after Khadr’s plea bargain and the diplomatic arrangement, and a year before Khadr’s transfer. The memo is stamped by the office of the deputy minister for public safety, and has “decision sought” near the top.
The memo explained that the department had received the Correctional Service of Canada’s assessment of Khadr’s request for transfer, and it discussed the points considered in that assessment. (Some of this is blacked out, including the projected date, as of October 2011, of Khadr’s return to Canada.)
“The file is complete and ready for your review and decision,” it concludes. “It is recommended that you render your decision as soon as possible.”
That day, Oct. 7, 2011, there was a flurry of email about the case within the public safety department, including one that included three questions the minister’s office wanted answered as soon as possible — but those questions, and the answers, are blacked out.
The final U.S. approval didn’t come until March 2012. Postmedia News quoted U.S. defence secretary Leon Panetta, in March, saying that there were “continuing” negotiations and “once those arrangements have been made, obviously we will approve the transfer to Canada.”
Obviously. That was always the plan. So you might think that once that approval did come through, a year and a half after Khadr’s plea bargain, Canada’s public safety minister would be ready. He’d had plenty of time to read all the reports and assessments.
Nope. It took a further six months.
I don’t know what emails were flying during those six months, because I’d already put in my Access request by then.
But there’s a hint from some emails in April, 2012, as bureaucrats went hunting for transcripts of the interview that forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner conducted with Omar Khadr, or of his testimony, or both. The fact that Welner had interviewed Khadr was not news to anyone, or shouldn’t have been; in April 2012, the bureaucrats were circulating a National Post article that was more than a year old by then.
Three months after that, in July 2012, Toews wrote to Panetta asking for video footage of Welner’s interview and another interview with Khadr.
Some of the secrecy that covers the Khadr transfer file can be put down to legitimate security and privacy concerns — although those were not always paramount, apparently. On April 24, 2012, Michael MacDonald, a director general at public safety, warned that “It has come to our attention that parts of DOJ and CSC have been sharing the OK transfer application package on the open email system. The package is clearly marked ‘secret’ and as such cannot be shared on the open system, unless the two sensitive areas have been redacted in full.”
But as the emails I got this week make clear, those concerns are all mixed up with internal politics (even a discussion about whose “turf,” or boardroom, would be best for a meeting) and a whole lot of ass-covering.
One policy analyst in the public safety department wrote some friendly advice to another: “This file is strictly ‘need to know’ so, personally, I would avoid saying anything. But if pressed, here are approved media lines (i.e., safe for public consumption).”
In a democracy, there is a very short list of legitimate reasons to decide that information is not “safe for public consumption.”
The emails also suggest that the length of time it took for the government to approve the Khadr transfer was not standard.
An April 2012 email from Daryl Churney, director of corrections policy at Public Safety Canada, says the “average processing time for ITOA (International Transfer of Offenders Act) applications over the last three years has been 10 months, from the time the CSC received sentencing documentation from the foreign jurisdiction to the time the Minister renders a decision.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Kate Heartfield
On Sept. 29, 2012, Omar Khadr came back to Canada.
I find it difficult to believe it could take two years to process paperwork about anything, never mind settling the already determined fate of a prisoner who was well known to both sides. Then again, I’ve never worked in government. But in fact, it seems that it didn’t take two years to process the paperwork. We know that by October, 2011, when Khadr’s year in U.S. custody was up, the Correctional Service of Canada had assessed his request for a transfer and handed the file over to Vic Toews’ public safety department.
That’s confirmed in a batch of heavily redacted documents I got in the mail this week, in response to an Access to Information request. I made the request back in April, after my questions to a spokesperson for the public safety department went unanswered.
Many of the 518 pages I received this week are useless because so much is blacked out — including many of the dates when paperwork moved from one government office to another. But some parts survive, including parts of a “memorandum to the minister” dated Oct. 7, 2011 — nearly a year after Khadr’s plea bargain and the diplomatic arrangement, and a year before Khadr’s transfer. The memo is stamped by the office of the deputy minister for public safety, and has “decision sought” near the top.
The memo explained that the department had received the Correctional Service of Canada’s assessment of Khadr’s request for transfer, and it discussed the points considered in that assessment. (Some of this is blacked out, including the projected date, as of October 2011, of Khadr’s return to Canada.)
“The file is complete and ready for your review and decision,” it concludes. “It is recommended that you render your decision as soon as possible.”
That day, Oct. 7, 2011, there was a flurry of email about the case within the public safety department, including one that included three questions the minister’s office wanted answered as soon as possible — but those questions, and the answers, are blacked out.
The final U.S. approval didn’t come until March 2012. Postmedia News quoted U.S. defence secretary Leon Panetta, in March, saying that there were “continuing” negotiations and “once those arrangements have been made, obviously we will approve the transfer to Canada.”
Obviously. That was always the plan. So you might think that once that approval did come through, a year and a half after Khadr’s plea bargain, Canada’s public safety minister would be ready. He’d had plenty of time to read all the reports and assessments.
Nope. It took a further six months.
I don’t know what emails were flying during those six months, because I’d already put in my Access request by then.
But there’s a hint from some emails in April, 2012, as bureaucrats went hunting for transcripts of the interview that forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner conducted with Omar Khadr, or of his testimony, or both. The fact that Welner had interviewed Khadr was not news to anyone, or shouldn’t have been; in April 2012, the bureaucrats were circulating a National Post article that was more than a year old by then.
Three months after that, in July 2012, Toews wrote to Panetta asking for video footage of Welner’s interview and another interview with Khadr.
Some of the secrecy that covers the Khadr transfer file can be put down to legitimate security and privacy concerns — although those were not always paramount, apparently. On April 24, 2012, Michael MacDonald, a director general at public safety, warned that “It has come to our attention that parts of DOJ and CSC have been sharing the OK transfer application package on the open email system. The package is clearly marked ‘secret’ and as such cannot be shared on the open system, unless the two sensitive areas have been redacted in full.”
But as the emails I got this week make clear, those concerns are all mixed up with internal politics (even a discussion about whose “turf,” or boardroom, would be best for a meeting) and a whole lot of ass-covering.
One policy analyst in the public safety department wrote some friendly advice to another: “This file is strictly ‘need to know’ so, personally, I would avoid saying anything. But if pressed, here are approved media lines (i.e., safe for public consumption).”
In a democracy, there is a very short list of legitimate reasons to decide that information is not “safe for public consumption.”
The emails also suggest that the length of time it took for the government to approve the Khadr transfer was not standard.
An April 2012 email from Daryl Churney, director of corrections policy at Public Safety Canada, says the “average processing time for ITOA (International Transfer of Offenders Act) applications over the last three years has been 10 months, from the time the CSC received sentencing documentation from the foreign jurisdiction to the time the Minister renders a decision.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Kate Heartfield
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