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Lawyers for the accused in the Toronto terrorist conspiracy have charged authorities with violating their clientsÂ’ rights and subjecting them to various forms of abuse, including sleep deprivation and violence, according to a report. Keith Jones writes in the World Socialist Website (WSWS) from Toronto that 15 of the 17 accused are being held at the Maplehurst Correctional Centre in Milton, Ontario. The two who are not being held at Maplehurst were already in jail at the time of the June 2-3 operation that authorities are claiming averted a terrorist atrocity.The 15, almost exclusively young men or boys, have been denied the right to meet with their lawyers in private. They are being held in isolation in small, windowless cells that are lit at all times, and are permitted just 20 minutes of exercise alone every day. Lawyers for several of the accused claim that guards are waking the detainees every 30 minutes, have ordered them to remain silent and with their eyes turned toward the floor at all times, and are giving them just five minutes to eat their meals. Guards are also said to have manhandled and roughed up some of the detainees. When moving them about, the detainees are shackled at their hands and feet, then forced to march bent over at a 90-degree angle at the waist
According to Jones, who has followed this story form the day it broke, David Kolinsky, the lawyer for Zakaria Amara, said that a guard had pinned his client to the ground, poked his finger in his cheek and brushed his eye, after Amara, who is ticklish, laughed while being searched. When astride Amara, the guard reportedly exclaimed, “Is this funny?” Kolinsky said that keeping people in solitary confinement is known to cause depression and suicides and “is normally a form of punishment” reserved only “for people who misbehave and are violent against other offenders”.