How's That Again? Kindly Repeat...?
Increasingly countries around the world have come to the realization that there is no help for it but to mount state counter terrorism activities to protect their populations, their way of life, the very existence of their nations against the deadly incursion of terrorists. Some countries of the world have been living with the situation of terror-induced fear and violence for quite a while, but the incidents and episodes have increased, become deadlier and more far-reaching.Canada, like other Western democracies, has seen its safety threatened, its citizens imperilled, its well-being in a state of potentially fearsome disturbance. Not only from the potential incursions of violence from abroad, but also now from within. Thanks to the kindly auspices of rigidly totalitarian regimes in the Middle East who use oil money to fund terror-training madrassas throughout the world, including within Canada.
Can anything seem more obscenely absurd in a politically correct climate than the perceived need to protect every Canadian citizen equally regardless of circumstances, where a parliamentary committee will criticize Canada's security intelligence agency of violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its treatment of a self-avowed member of al-Qaeda whose purpose and activities were launched to achieve mass murder?
Yet here is the Security Intelligence Review Committee, faulting CSIS for failing to uphold the rights of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, Kuwait-born, Canadian raised and educated, who pledged himself as an Islamic holy warrior directly in a personal meeting with Osama bin Laden. A man who gladly accepted missions to blow up American and Israeli embassies in Singapore, then accepted another assignment to bring havoc to Oman.
Unsurprisingly, when he was arrested in Oman, The Canadian Security Intelligence Service wished to interview this Canadian, returning him to Canada where he was questioned. The RCMP, not in possession of any evidence of wrong-doing within Canada had no interest in further investigating or retaining him. But the U.S. Department of Justice did, and CSIS, with Jabarah's consent, surrendered him to U.S. custody.
This man, pledged to al-Qaeda, trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan as an expert sniper, became a leader of an al-Qaeda bombing cell. The mind that planned the 9/11 attacks personally trained Mr. Jabarah, as did the mastermind of the Bangkok bombing. None of which has stopped the Security Intelligence Review Committee from crying foul against CSIS.
Uppermost in mind the "protection" of the human and civil rights of a Canadian, irrespective of the fact that this particular Canadian aspired to mass murder.
"Mohammed Mansour Jabarah is a Canadian who, no matter how heinous his crimes and no matter how much we deplore them, is entitled to all the rights and freedoms afforded to any other citizen under our Charter", according to the report put out by the committee. Oh, really? Are we obligated as a matter of Canadian jurisprudence, entrenched in our laws, to honour and assist bloody-intentioned jihadists?
CSIS observes that it had several alternatives; to permit a trained and determined terrorist to go on his way until his activities resulted in the successful bombing of an installation that would take the lives of many innocent people, or to perform a service for which they have been established - to protect Canadians, as well as any other targeted country. It chose to consult with our next-door neighbour, one of whose diplomatic installations was targeted for destruction, its citizens to be murdered.
Mr. Jabarah undertook to sign a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, to reveal to them the information that they sought from him, an al-Qaeda insider, an agent of jihad. He did co-operate with American justice authorities. Up until the time his brother, another al-Qaeda operative was killed by Saudi security forces as he evaded arrest for his part in bombings in Riyadh.
At which time he turned himself about, refusing to co-operate any further, emphasizing his refusal by stabbing a U.S. official. He remains in U.S. custody, in criminal detention, awaiting sentencing.
Need we really concern ourselves with the well-being of such an twisted mind? A man who turned his back on all the freedoms that Canada offered him, choosing instead to accept the blandishments of a radical cleric, accepting his obligation as a fundamentalist Muslim to avenge the purported insults visited on Islam by the non-Muslim world?
SIRC insists that Mr. Jabarah did not have independent legal advice and was not "read his rights". His age, the report added, emotional state, fear and length of time in CSIS custody might, they infer, have played a role in his decision to agree to be rendered to the custody of U.S. Justice agents.
Might Mr. Jabarah have delicately read out the human rights of those whose lives he conspired to destroy? Did not our national intelligence agency have a professional and national obligation to dispatch this man, to turn him over to the justice system of a country with which we have firm and resolute ties?
This man was an adult at the time he decided to spurn the life offered him in Canada. He purposefully sought out terrorist training, determinedly sought to meet Osama bin Laden and throw in his future with that of al-Qaeda.
If he harboured any doubts while in the relatively benign custody of CSIS what is that to the extent of the horror he attempted to unleash on an unready world?
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 31, 2007
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