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War criminals have rights: minister
Tip o’ the hat to LGF.
Canada’s Immigration Minister wrote in a recent letter that he is concerned about protecting the privacy rights of the dozens of wanted war crimes suspects on the loose in the country. In a letter to senior Ontario law enforcement officials, Denis Coderre defended his department’s handling of 59 suspected war criminals wanted on Canada-wide warrants after they failed to show up for immigration proceedings. The wanted foreigners, who include a Lebanese murderer and a Kashmiri militant considered armed and dangerous, came to Canada, were released and then skipped their deportation hearings. Their whereabouts are unknown.
Not that Denis would do anything about if their whereabouts were known.
Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino called the Minister’s letter "criminally silly" "silly" and said public safety is more important than the privacy rights of war criminals who have broken Canadian law by failing to appear at their own immigration hearings.
This man makes too much sense to rise much higher in Canadian politics.
Mr. Coderre has said little publicly about the issue but he spelled out his position in detail in a recent letter to Robert Runciman, Ontario’s Minister of Public Safety and Security, arguing the government must ensure it safeguards the suspected war criminals’ rights to privacy and due process. "In many cases, the government has reasons to believe that certain individuals have committed serious offences in other countries and should therefore be denied entry to Canada or removed," Mr. Coderre wrote. "Where the individual has not yet had a full and proper hearing and determination on their admissibility, however, the government must act carefully to ensure that the Privacy Act is not violated."
Another option would have been keeping them on an ice floe somewhere in the Canadian archipelago, but that also makes too much sense.
He's invented a Catch-22 here. If they haven't been duly processed, they're presumed innocent and retain their privacy rights. If they skip and go underground to avoid the due processing, they've not been duly processed, so they retain their privacy rights.
Documents obtained by the National Post, however, show only four of the 59 wanted war criminals have not yet had hearings. The other 55 are wanted for removal, meaning their complicity in crimes against humanity has already been established.
But at least their rights weren’t violated.
The Post revealed in June that Citizenship and Immigration Canada had lost track of 59 war criminals from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. Warrants have been issued for their arrests but the department has so far refused to publicly release their names and pictures, making it impossible for Canadians to help find them.
But at least their rights weren’t violated.
In his letter, Mr. Coderre said the desire of Canadians to live in safety must be balanced against the rights of wanted war crimes suspects. "Canada, of course, is governed according to the principle of judicial process and the rule of law," Mr. Coderre wrote. "The main issue in dealing with suspected war criminals, therefore, is the extent to which all levels of government can co-operate to protect the safety and security of Canadians without substantially abandoning the rights of an accused to a fair hearing, or our adherence to the presumption of innocence."
It’s been said that the American Constitution is not a suicide pact. Apparently the Canadians have a different view of theirs.
Posted by: Steve White 2003-10-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19725