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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
January 17, 2026 - 17 janvier 2026
| | What we've been up to in 2025, and our plans for 2026! | |
ICLMG 03/12/2025 - Thanks to the support of our members and donors, we’ve been able to do a lot and work on the following since June:
- Anti-privacy and xenophobic bills C-2 & C-12
- Anti-protest and anti-freedom bill C-9
- Impacts of Countering Terrorism Financing on charities, non-profits, solidarity work and international assistance.
- Canada’s complicity in torture
- Justice for Hassan Diab
- Artificial Intelligence regulatory frameworks & national security
- The gaps in oversight and review of national security agencies
- Consultations on the UN Global Counter-terrorism strategy & definitions of “terrorism” and “violent extremism"
- We were interviewed or quoted in dozens of media pieces
- And much more!
For all details on our activities, and our plans for 2026, click here.
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C-2 surveils, C-9 criminalizes dissent and C-12 strips status — all under the broad banner of “security” | | |
The Toronto Star 09/12/2025 - The Carney government’s legislative blitz — Bills C-2, C-8, C-9, and C-12 — has been presented to Canadians as a necessary response to rising hate, border insecurity and cyber threats. In reality, taken together these measures represent one of the most aggressive expansions of state surveillance, policing discretion and speech-related criminalization in decades.
Framed as safety tools, they increasingly resemble a co-ordinated tightening of controls over dissent, privacy, protest, and refugee protections.
No one disputes that communities deserve protection from hate crimes and real violence. Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Black, Indigenous and other communities face serious threats that must be confronted. But safeguarding vulnerable groups must never become a pretext for weakening democratic freedoms themselves.
At the centre of the current debate sits Bill C-9 — the so-called “Combating Hate Act.” While introduced as a response to antisemitism, its reach extends far beyond violent conduct. The bill creates new offences criminalizing intimidation or obstruction of access to locations used by “identifiable groups.”
Individuals deemed to be interfering with access to religious or cultural institutions could face imprisonment of up to 10 years — language broad enough to capture peaceful protest activity near synagogues, mosques, schools, or community centres, including demonstrations directed at alleged misconduct occurring within or around those institutions. [...]
C-9 also establishes a new offence tied to displaying symbols associated with government-listed terrorist organizations — lists created through political designation processes rather than judicial findings. Civil-liberty groups caution that the offence could sweep in historical, academic, or protest symbolism, leaving enforcement dependent on subjective police assessments rather than objective harm. [...]
Bill C-9 does not stand alone.
Bill C-2, the government’s “Strong Borders Act,” substantially expands police and intelligence access to digital metadata under lower legal thresholds while facilitating broader data-sharing arrangements with U.S. law-enforcement authorities. Civil-liberties advocates argue these provisions weaken long-standing privacy safeguards and expose Canadians’ personal communications records — including cloud, VPN and messaging data — to cross-border use without robust judicial scrutiny.
Bill C-8, the cybersecurity bill, empowers the Minister of Industry to issue confidential orders compelling telecommunications providers to suspend phone or internet services, alter network standards, or comply with surveillance-related directives — all without prior judicial authorization and subject to sweeping nondisclosure requirements. Providers face severe financial penalties for non-compliance. Such powers could be misused against lawful protest movements or political dissent under broad claims of network “disruption.”
Bill C-12 repackages elements of C-2’s immigration measures, expanding deportation authority, imposing retroactive restrictions on refugee hearings and granting sweeping ministerial discretion to cancel immigration status without individualized assessment. More than 300 civil-society organizations — including the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Amnesty International, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the Migrant Rights Network — have condemned the legislation as inconsistent with Canada’s human-rights and refugee-law obligations.
Taken together, C-2 surveils, C-8 silences digitally, C-9 criminalizes protest expression and C-12 strips status — all under the broad banner of “security.”
As a lawyer and legal academic who has spent decades defending free expression, civil and human rights, I find this convergence of power deeply alarming.
Each bill independently raises civil-liberty concerns. Read collectively, they form an emerging legal architecture that erodes checks on executive power and chills dissent across multiple arenas — from street protests to digital communications, from religious expression to political advocacy, and now even refugee rights.
This is not how democratic societies protect vulnerable communities. Real safety comes from community investment, education, targeted enforcement against genuine violence, and strong social protections — not from expanding police discretion, secret surveillance tools, or speech-based criminal prosecutions. Source
Press conference: NDP MPs Leah Gazan and Jenny Kwan Join Women’s Organizations and Migrant Rights Advocates Condemning Bill C-12
NEW ACTION Tell Senators: Vote No on Bill C-12
Video: Canada’s border agents don’t deserve a pass
| | The “Combatting Hate Act” is part of a wave of anti-protest legislation in Canada | |
CCPA 08/12/2025 - On September 19, amidst a flurry of other new federal legislation, Justice Minister Sean Fraser introduced Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act. The act, according to the press release announcing its introduction, is meant to provide police and prosecutors new tools to counter “rising antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia.”
While those may seem like noble goals, Bill C-9 has received widespread and sharp criticism from civil-liberties groups, community advocates and activists who warn it risks failing in its stated goals while providing police with the power to engage in increased repression of dissent and speech.
The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says the bill risks weakening Charter rights for everyone, including the communities the government claims it wants to protect. The Black Legal Action Centre also raised concerns, noting that while marginalised groups need protection from hate, the bill undermines “the critical ability of these groups to advocate for their rights and challenge systemic injustice.”
Egale, an organization which fights against homophobia and transphobia, says that the bill “appears less as a tool for protecting marginalized groups and more as a broad expansion of police power with a high risk of misuse.”
Expanding the definition of hate
Bill C-9, officially titled An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places), or the Combatting Hate Act for short, introduces several new restrictions on protesters, including penalties for displaying “hate symbols.”
The bill also expands limits on demonstrations by banning protests around community, cultural, and religious centres, regardless of the activities taking place inside. Critics warn that creating “bubble zones” around such places restricts freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, and could effectively criminalize lawful protest that is not hate-motivated—for example, when Palestine solidarity protesters (many of them Jewish) protested outside synagogues hosting non-religious events promoting the illegal sale of Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), argues that the measure would ban protests at thousands of locations across the country. She adds that if the bill becomes law, demonstrators might not even realize they are in a restricted area until they find themselves subject to criminal penalties.
The federal government says these new restrictions aim to make Canada safer and better able to fight hate crimes. But, in a joint letter, 37 diverse civil society organisations stressed their opposition to the bill. The signatories demanded that Parliament withdraw the bill, saying it would worsen systemic inequities and undermine Canada’s commitments to freedom of expression.
McNicoll says Bill C-9 risks “criminalising peaceful protesters” if passed in its current form.She emphasised the importance of combating hatred and building a more equal society, and noted that police already have grounds to intervene when demonstrations become violent or incite violence. But she argues that Bill C-9 goes much further, including in its approach to “hate symbols.”
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The bill is inviting the police to pay particular attention to specific symbols and see these signs as evidence of an intent to promote hatred willfully,” she says. “There’s this risk that a lot of protesters will be arrested based on this new provision.”
The risk is heightened by how broadly “symbols” could be interpreted. Critics warned a keffiyeh, or even a small pin expressing opposition to genocide, might be treated as signs of hateful intent, exposing demonstrators to arrest. Such events are already occurring elsewhere in the world, in countries like Germany and the United Kingdom, where crackdowns on Palestine solidarity activists are occurring under the legal logic of anti-hate legislation.
Some legal infrastructure defining criticisms of Israel as hate speech is already in place. In 2019, the federal government adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which broadens the definition of antisemitism to include some criticisms of Israel. According to the federal government’s document on the subject, referring to “the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor” is anti-semitism. The document’s list of examples of hate-speech includes phrases such as “you can’t be antiracist and Zionist” and that “Zionism is a racist & violent settler-colonial project.” Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) criticized the definition, saying it was being used to “suppress and even criminalize pro-Palestine speech and activism.”
The bill takes place in a context of a broader legislative crackdown on protest, arriving as Mi’kmaw activists in Nova Scotia face new restrictions and land defenders in British Columbia receive prison sentences. It also comes amid nationwide pro-Palestine demonstrations calling for a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
From September 11 to October 7
Lawyer Dania Majid, founder and president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, believes the timing of Bill C-9 is not coincidental. Like many other signatories of the joint letter, she sees the bill as an effort to limit pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Canada since October 2023. Majid argues that the bill, along with recent measures affecting Indigenous activists, reflects that “Canada is a settler colonial state,” and warns that all activists could soon feel the impact.
“Some might think this is just against Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims, and not affecting them,” she adds. “But, over time, these types of laws become normalised and applied to other movements, other populations.”
Majid points to earlier patterns, saying the same approach was taken after the September 11 attacks, when Muslim communities were targeted first, and then other dissidents were silenced.
“In the [post] 9/11 era, everyone who opposed the government or the war in Iraq or Afghanistan was labelled a terrorist or a terrorist sympathiser. Then it expanded to Indigenous communities defending their territories and the environmental movements,” she explains.
Environmental activists have echoed this warning. Alan Silverman of Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN) agrees with Majid and argues that, instead of curbing hate, the bill could be used to target people who speak out on environmental issues.
“While the main source of this bill is the Palestinian question, it can be used to target all forms of protest, including climate activism,” he says.
Education and community-based consultation
Experts highlight two major flaws in the proposed legislation: the bill’s vague definition of hate offences and the broad powers it gives police. They note that existing laws already give authorities the tools to keep people safe during demonstrations and to address hate speech. For these reasons, they are urging lawmakers not to pass the bill and instead to rely on the existing legal framework.
Silverman also stresses the role of education in confronting hate speech, arguing that rather than expanding police powers or creating new offences, the government should invest in anti–hate speech education to address the issue at its roots. “If people are being educated that they all deserve the same rights, then you will move away from a society that promotes hatred,” he says.
McNicoll warns that Bill C-9 will further silence marginalized communities by restricting where they can protest and limiting the public expression of their concerns. She says these new barriers risk closing off important avenues for their voices, particularly on issues affecting their communities. To address hate crimes effectively, McNicoll emphasizes the importance of community-based initiatives.
“Communities that are disproportionately targeted by hatred should be consulted. They should also be given tools and platforms to talk about their lived experiences and share what they believe the solutions could be,” she says. “Criminal law is not the solution to every societal problem.” Source
ACTION Withdraw Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act: a threat to our rights and freedoms!
ACTION CMPAC tool kit: Visit your MP!
Canadian Labour Congress: Protecting Fundamental Rights — Our Concerns with Bill C-9
Wébinaire : Projet de loi C-9 : une menace pour nos libertés!
Centre for Free Expression: The Feds’ “Combatting Hate Act” (C-9) Should Be Withdrawn Now
Video: Rachel Gilmore: There are too many Bill 9s and they are ALL SCARY
| | Policing Palestine Solidarity: A Crisis of Civil Liberties in Canada (2021-2025) | | |
CJPME Foundation 22/12/2025 - Since October 7, 2023, Canada has witnessed one of the most sustained mass mobilizations in its history. From coast to coast, hundreds of thousands of citizens—students, workers, families, and seniors—have taken to the streets to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Canadian complicity in what the International Court of Justice has flagged as a plausible genocide. Yet, instead of engaging with this democratic expression, Canadian authorities responded by recasting a human rights movement as a national security threat. This report documents how the state mobilized an unprecedented apparatus of surveillance, inter-agency coordination, and militarized policing to contain a movement that challenged its foreign policy.
Our analysis of protest data between 2021 and 2025 reveals a policing response that was not driven by public safety needs, but by political bias. While pro-Palestine demonstrations accounted for only 10 % of all protests during this period, they attracted 37% of all police interventions—a rate of repression that eclipses every other social cause, including labour and environmental movements. This disparity becomes even more stark when juxtaposed with the reality on the ground: over 96% of pro-Palestine protests were entirely peaceful. The data paints a clear picture: a movement that posed virtually no physical threat to the public was nonetheless treated as dangerous, with police enforcement escalating dramatically in 2024 to target nearly two-thirds of all protest activity, despite the movement representing less than a quarter of events.
Behind this visible show of force lay a sophisticated strategy of "strategic incapacitation." This was not merely reactive policing; it was a proactive effort coordinated at the highest levels. Through the "ADM NS Ops" committee, federal intelligence agencies (CSIS, RCMP) and Public Safety Canada integrated with municipal police forces to monitor peaceful organizers, effectively turning local dissent into a matter of national intelligence. On the ground, this translated into "Project Resolute" and similar operations that cost taxpayers millions while deploying riot squads, drones, and mounted units against peaceful crowds. The legal system was simultaneously weaponized: activists faced pre-dawn raids on family homes, tenuous "hate-motivated" charges for political slogans, and restrictive bail conditions designed not to ensure safety, but to strip key organizers of their ability to speak or assemble.
The crackdown has exposed critical vulnerabilities in Canada’s legal framework. The proposed Bill C-9 (The Combatting Hate Act) currently before Parliament threatens to codify these repressive tactics by creating "bubble zones" that criminalize protest around community institutions, regardless of the political nature of the events inside. By removing safeguards for hate speech prosecutions and vaguely defining "hate symbols," the Bill risks handing police the power to interpret cultural symbols—like the keffiyeh—as criminal evidence. Simultaneously, the lack of federal protection for "political belief" in the Canadian Human Rights Act has allowed institutions to fire, harass, and debank advocates with impunity. Unlike in Quebec, where political discrimination is illegal, federal law currently offers no shield for those persecuted for their views on Palestine, leaving allies particularly vulnerable to institutional retribution.
The policing of Palestine solidarity in Canada represents a profound failure of democratic accountability. By treating principled dissent as disorder and political speech as hate, the state has set a dangerous precedent that threatens the civil liberties of all Canadians. This report concludes that the only path forward is a structural reckoning: a Federal Commission of Inquiry to expose the political interference behind these operations, the immediate withdrawal of Bill C-9, and the amendment of federal human rights law to explicitly prohibit political persecution. Without these changes, the machinery of repression built today will remain, ready to be turned against the next movement that dares to challenge the status quo. Read more - Lire plus
Charges Dropped Against Nine Arrested at Pro-Palestine Protest in Toronto
Ontario government call for Toronto police to crack down on protests puts free expression at risk: expert
Hassan Ben Imran: The UK is taking political prisoners to evade accountability for genocide
UJFP: 400 civil-es tué-es depuis le "cessez-le-feu": Il n’y a pas de trêve à Gaza, il faut arrêter l’occupant israélien!
NEW Ottawa protest: Ceasefire violated, Sat Jan 24 at 2 PM
NEW Demand Canada take concrete action in response to Israel's banning of 37 aid organizations
NEW Tell the Canadian Government: Sanction Israel Now
| | How Canada Arms Israel's Genocide | Bill C-233 Explained | | Seeking Justice for Hassan Diab: Videos from Our 2025 Ottawa Event | |
Justice for Hassan Diab 14/12/2025 - Watch videos from our November 14, 2025, event in Ottawa, “Seeking Justice for Hassan Diab – Almost 20 Years of Violated Human Rights”. The large turnout and engaged Q&A at the event demonstrated broad support for justice, fairness, and human rights in general, and for Hassan Diab in particular.
Donald Bayne, Hassan’s lawyer since early 2009, provided an overview of Hassan’s long struggle for justice that highlighted the many, atrocious legal missteps in the case, and Mr. Bayne’s own dismay at seeing an innocent person being subjected to such an ordeal.
Human rights advocate and 2025 Massey Lecturer, Professor Alex Neve, offered powerful reflections on the human-rights implications of the Diab case.
Watch “Hassan Diab: A Case of Relentless Persecution”, an interview with Mr. Bayne, where he presents a summary of the many legal missteps leading to Dr. Diab’s extradition to France in 2014 and the sham trial held in France in 2023. This interview was pre-recorded and shown at the event.
Watch “Defending the Wrongfully Accused”, which presents Mr. Bayne’s commentary and Q&A at the event.
Watch event keynote address by human rights advocate, Professor Alex Neve, where he offered powerful reflections on the human-rights implications of the Diab case, and Mr. Neve’s perspectives on the ongoing struggle for recognition of universal human rights.
Your help in the call for justice for Hassan Diab is important!
• Join the postcard campaign to urge the Canadian government to refuse any future extradition request for Dr. Diab and to reform Canada’s Extradition Act. Postcards are available at Octopus Books in Ottawa, or you write to diabsupport@gmail.com to request that postcards be mailed to you.
• Send a letter to the Minister of Justice, Mr. Sean Fraser, to urge him to refuse any future extradition request and to put an end – once and for all – to this ongoing miscarriage of justice. Source
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Law experts question Ottawa’s terrorism designations for crime groups | |
The Globe and Mail 02/01/2026 - A formal review of Canada’s processes for designating terrorist groups is needed, say national security experts, warning that recent decisions to list organized crime groups could distract counterterrorism officials from their core work of preventing mass attacks.
Law experts further warn that any findings of a lack of rigour in Canada’s listing process could potentially expose the entire federal Anti-Terrorism Act to significant court battles. Created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Public Safety Canada’s designated list initially included mostly Islamist extremist groups such as al-Qaeda. Over the past five years, federal cabinet ministers responsible for the list have also added several violent white-supremacist groups and nihilistic online entities.
Then, in 2025, Canadian notions of what is legally considered terrorism appeared to change. On Feb. 20, both Canada and the United States designated the same seven drug cartels, predominantly from Mexico, as terrorist entities. U.S. President Donald Trump had just returned to office and was mounting a trade war against Canada, citing unsubstantiated allegations that fentanyl was flowing into his country over its northern border.
In October, Ottawa listed the India-based Bishnoi Gang after regional politicians, including Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, pressed the federal government to take this step. Mr. Brown said in an interview that he did this hoping such a listing might curb the group’s alleged violent extortion rackets within Canada’s South Asian communities.
The federal government’s power to designate an entity as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code is a significant measure. In Canada, it gives banks the power to immediately seize a group’s assets. Listings can also encourage law-enforcement, intelligence and border agencies to redirect resources, launch probes or step up scrutiny of suspected members.
Experts say, however, that there has been little public explanation from officials in Ottawa as to precisely why they appear to be altering a national-security power in order to take aim at organized-crime groups. [...]
Prof. Phillips said in an interview that counterterrorism measures are often ineffective against crime gangs. He added that Canada’s cartel-listing measure appears to have been purely intended to ward off the Trump administration’s tariff threats.
Along with Britain, New Zealand and Australia, Canada and the United States are part of what’s known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – an exceptionally close security partnership forged after the Second World War. However, Canada and the U.S. are the only two countries in this group to have designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
Government officials in Ottawa say that the new designations of organized-crime groups are justified. “The decision to list an entity under the Criminal Code follows a rigorous, evidence-based process,” said Simon Lafortune, spokesman for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree. “Public statements accompanying listings are necessarily limited in detail due to national security and privacy considerations,” he added.
The February decision to list seven drug cartels, including the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, was made under then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau. The public safety minister at the time, David McGuinty, issued a statement alleging these cartels “facilitate terrorist activity by taking hostages, attacking civilian and critical infrastructure, and working to diminish the ability of local governments.”
Mr. Anandasangaree issued a statement in October saying he was designating India’s Bishnoi Gang because it “generates terror through extortion and intimidation.” One independent watchdog that has the power to review the federal government’s counterterrorism measures is the National Security Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA).
“Terrorism listing is not something that we’ve scrutinized thus far,” said Craig Forcese, NSIRA’s vice-chair. In an interview, he said that while his agency has the mandate to look at Public Safety’s designated list, it is struggling with a substantial workload and looming budget cuts.
Michael Nesbitt, a law professor at the University of Calgary, says it is important that politicians adhere to the strictures surrounding the listing process. One reason for that is because the list is an important thread in the overall fabric of the federal Anti-Terrorism Act, a broader statute passed in 2001 that enables a variety of criminal, border and intelligence actions today. [...]
He explained that courts would start to ask hard questions if a cartel member ever appeared in a Canadian court to try to reclaim a seized asset or to fight a terrorism charge. If that happened, the government would be forced to try to prove its anti-terrorism actions are reasonable and constitutional, Prof. Nesbitt said. And if it could not, then “you’re left with a civil-liberties concern that groups are being listed based on political imperatives.” Source
ACTION Canada: Abolish rights-violating terrorist entities list!
Iran lists Canada’s navy as terrorist organization in response to move by Ottawa
US labels Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan as ‘terrorists’: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official says group rejects US designation and will ‘pursue all legal avenues to challenge’ it.
| | Justice Dept. Drops Claim That Venezuela’s ‘Cartel de los Soles’ Is an Actual Group | Last year, before capturing President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration designated a Venezuelan slang term for drug corruption in the military as a terrorist organization and said he led it. | |
The New York Times 06/01/2026 - The Justice Department has backed off a dubious claim about President Nicolás Maduro that the Trump administration promoted last year in laying the groundwork to remove him from power in Venezuela: accusing him of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles.
That claim traces back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Mr. Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, copying language from it, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and President Trump’s national security adviser, ordered the State Department to do the same.
But experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues have said it is actually a slang term, invented by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s, for officials who are corrupted by drug money. And on Saturday, after the administration captured Mr. Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point.
Prosecutors still accused Mr. Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but they abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the revised indictment states that it refers to a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” fueled by drug money.
Where the old indictment refers 32 times to Cartel de los Soles and describes Mr. Maduro as its leader, the new one mentions it twice and says that he, like his predecessor, President Hugo Chávez, participated in, perpetuated and protected this patronage system.
Profits from drug trafficking and the protection of drug trafficking partners “flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military and intelligence officials, who operate in a patronage system run by those at the top — referred to as the Cartel de los Soles or Cartel of the Suns, a reference to the sun insignia affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials,” the new indictment said.
The retreat calls into greater question the legitimacy of the Trump administration’s designation of Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization last year. Spokespeople at the White House and the Justice, State and Treasury Departments did not respond to requests for comment.
Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, said the new indictment’s portrayal of Cartel de los Soles was “exactly accurate to reality,” unlike the 2020 iteration.
“I think the new indictment gets it right, but the designations are still far from reality,” she said. “Designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”
Still, Mr. Rubio again referred to Cartel de los Soles as an actual cartel in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day after the revised indictment was unsealed.
“We will continue to reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats that are bringing drugs toward the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organizations including the Cartel de los Soles,” he said. “Of course, their leader, the leader of that cartel, is now in U.S. custody and facing U.S. justice in the Southern District of New York. And that’s Nicolás Maduro.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment, which details major trafficking organizations, has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. Nor has the annual World Drug Report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
But the 2020 indictment, which laid out a lengthy narrative about a yearslong conspiracy, portrayed Cartel de los Soles as a drug trafficking organization, led by Mr. Maduro. It said the group took actions like providing weapons to the FARC, a Marxist rebel group in Colombia that has funded its militant activities by drug trafficking, and trying to “flood” the United States with cocaine “as a weapon.”
The drafting of the 2020 indictment was overseen by Emil Bove III, then a terrorism and international narcotics unit prosecutor in New York. Mr. Bove ran the Justice Department in the opening months of the second Trump administration and had a turbulent tenure, which included firing dozens of officials and ordering the dismissal of bribery charges against Eric Adams, then the mayor of New York. Mr. Trump later appointed Mr. Bove to a lifetime position on a federal appeals court.
While the experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues praised the corrective about Cartel de los Soles, some also criticized other aspects of the revised indictment.
For example, the indictment added as a defendant — and a supposed co-conspirator with Mr. Maduro — the head of a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua. The connection described in the indictment is thin: It says only that the gang leader, in phone calls in 2019 with someone he thought was a Venezuelan official, offered escort services to protect drug shipments passing through Venezuela.
Last year, Mr. Trump declared that Mr. Maduro was directing the activities of Tren de Aragua, even though the U.S. intelligence community believes the opposite is true.
Jeremy McDermott, a co-founder of InSight Crime, a Latin America crime and security think tank, said the inclusion of the Tren de Aragua leader as an accused co-conspirator with Mr. Maduro in a drug trafficking conspiracy “reflects President Trump’s rhetoric” but was misleading. He pointed to his think tank’s analysis of Tren de Aragua that says the gang has no ownership of major cocaine shipments. Source
NEW ACTION Urgent: No War on Venezuela
A Criminal Empire: The United States launches a conquest and occupation of Venezuela to extract its oil wealth. The neocon dream is the America First dream
UN experts condemn US aggression against Venezuela
Venezuela: Accountability and democracy cannot be built on violations of international law, warn UN experts
The U.S. Is Leaving Boat Strike Survivors to Drown
After Undercounting Boat Strike Killings, U.S. Military Updates Death Toll
'No such thing as a better colonizer': Inuit emphatically reject U.S. takeover of Greenland
First, they came for Venezuela: Can Canada afford to be so quiescent and cowardly in the face of yet another Trump aggression?
| | Iran: UN Human Rights Chief urges authorities to end violent repression and calls for accountability | |
OHCHR 13/01/2026 - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Tuesday said he was horrified by the mounting violence directed by security forces at protesters across Iran, as reports indicate hundreds [maybe thousands] have been killed and thousands arrested.
The High Commissioner urged the Iranian authorities to halt immediately all forms of violence and repression against peaceful protesters and to restore full access to the internet and telecommunication services. He also called for accountability for the serious violations.
“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” Türk said.
“As we saw most recently in 2022, broad sections of the Iranian population have taken to the streets, demanding fundamental changes in the governance of their country,” he added. “And once again, the authorities’ reaction is to inflict brutal force to repress legitimate demands for change.”
“This cycle of horrific violence cannot continue. The Iranian people and their demands for fairness, equality and justice must be heard,” said the High Commissioner, adding that all killings, violence against protesters, and other human rights violations must be investigated in line with international human rights norms and standards, and those responsible held to account.
Several hospitals are reportedly overwhelmed by the number of casualties, including children. Nationwide internet and telecommunications shutdowns are one of the main challenges to full verification. There are reports indicating that members of security forces have also been killed.
“It is also extremely worrying to see public statements by some judicial officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings” Türk added.
Since 8 January, Iranian authorities have imposed a nationwide internet shutdown, affecting Iranians’ rights to freedom of expression and access to information, disrupting emergency and lifesaving services and obstructing independent human rights monitoring.
“Iranians have the right to demonstrate peacefully. Their grievances need to be heard and addressed, and not instrumentalised by anyone,” Türk added. Source
| | What’s Behind Trump’s Christmas Strikes on Nigeria? Anti-Christian Genocide or Appeasing MAGA Base? | |
DemocracyNow! 29/12/2025 - President Trump says the U.S. strikes in Nigeria on Christmas Day were aimed at ISIS fighters and part of a campaign to stop a supposed anti-Christian “genocide” in the country. But residents of the area say there is no recorded history of anti-Christian terrorism, and organizations monitoring violence in the region say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are killed more than Muslims and other religious groups in Nigeria. This comes as a suicide bomber detonated an explosive inside a mosque in Nigeria’s Borno state on Christmas Day, killing five worshipers and injuring 35 more.
“Nigeria has a very serious problem of insecurity that affects a wide range of Nigerians, especially those who live in the more remote parts of the country,” but violence impacts “Muslims more so than Christians,” says Yinka Adegoke, Africa editor of Semafor. Adegoke says Trump’s religious framing has more to do with U.S. culture wars and appeasing his base of evangelicals than seriously reckoning with issues of poverty and violence in Nigeria, which he notes were exacerbated by U.S. cuts to foreign aid. [...]
YINKA ADEGOKE: Right. Yeah, no, you’re very right. This has been — Nigeria has a very serious problem of insecurity that affects a wide range of Nigerians, especially those who live in the more remote parts of the country, which tend to be in the north, and the north of Nigeria is predominantly Muslim. And therefore, when these insecurity problems happen, for a variety of reasons — and we can get into some of those — they tend to impact Muslims more so than Christians. But over the years, of course, Christians have also been attacked. Some churches have been attacked, just as mosques have been attacked, because, obviously, churches and mosques tend to be fairly vulnerable and easy targets.
But, you know, there’s almost a sort of a callousness to the way President Trump referred to a “Christmas present,” when, you know, there are real lives at stake here. People have been killed. People are living really insecure lives. And it’s not just because they are Christians or because they are Muslims. It’s because there’s a general problem of insecurity in this region, often fueled by, frankly, just poverty. Lots of young people without work to do are easily engaged in these kinds of, you know, violent acts in order to survive, frankly.
But, you know, it’s — the thing that is — overall, that is really problematic about what President Trump is doing here is that you have a country that definitely does have a problem, and, in fact, maybe some of these strikes will have a short-term impact, but they don’t really address the sort of underlying problems. And it feels like, you know, the U.S. is almost exporting its own sort of culture wars about the kinds of things that evangelical Christians have pushed for a long time about Christians being persecuted around the world, and sort of projecting this onto Nigeria. [...]
AMY GOODMAN: So, here you have President Trump saying there’s a Christian genocide in Nigeria, but the Trump administration has denied entry for Nigerian refugees, as well as virtually every other refugee group, with the exception of white South Africans. A total of 19 countries are now banned from all immigrant visas and all tourist, student exchange visitor visas, according — including Nigeria, from the American Immigration Council. So, they are allowing in white South Africans, they say, because white Christian South Africans are targeted, but not allowing in, even though they bomb Nigeria, Black Nigerian Christians. [...]
AMY GOODMAN: Yinka Adegoke, I want to thank you for being with us and also want to note, you know, the U.S. is attacking these Venezuelan boats. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves. And then you have Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa. We’ll talk more about those connections in the days to come. Read more - Lire plus
| | “We never feared drones until they killed Omar" | | |
Drop Site News 22/12/2025 - On September 13, Omar Abdullahi, a high-profile clan chief in Somalia’s Sanaag province, called his wife to tell her that he was on his way home from a nearby town, and to ask her to prepare dinner for the evening. Abdullahi was on the road back to Badhan, a remote town in the northeast of the country, returning to mediate a clan dispute, one of the responsibilities he held as a local community leader.
Abdullahi never reached home. On the drive back, his car was struck by three missiles fired by a drone overhead, incinerating his vehicle and killing him instantly. Only a piece of his stomach remained in the burnt-out wreckage, according to a death certificate seen by Drop Site News.
The strike shocked residents of Badhan and members of the Warsangeli clan that he hailed from. They had largely avoided the U.S.’s two-decade shadow war against the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State. Abdullahi himself was a prominent local elder, who residents and local government officials said was widely known and respected in the region.
Three months later, Asha Abdi Mohamed, Abdullahi’s mother, told Drop Site that she lives with the trauma of his killing. “I always have flashbacks of him being burned in a car. That is why I’m scared to sleep at night,” she said. “The soil under my feet was moving when I found out it was Omar who was killed.” Mohamed said that the drones continue to fly near Badhan; adding that she quietly prays for them to fall from the sky in order to be at ease.
Four days after the strike, the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed responsibility for Abdullahi’s killing. AFRICOM claimed that it had acted in concert with the Somali government in killing what it described as an al-Shabaab arms dealer, adding that “specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security.”
Although the region, adjacent the Gulf of Aden, is a key smuggling route for weapons entering Somalia from the Middle East, interviews with local residents in Badhan and Somali government officials contradict claims that Abdillahi was an al-Shabaab operative or weapons dealer.
Omar Abdillahi Ashur is a commander of the Daraawish force, a specially-trained regional paramilitary unit that operates under the regional government in Sanaag. He knew Abdullahi since the 1970s, and said that he had in fact been a leader in fighting Somali Islamist groups in the area. “He was a backbone to resistance against terrorism,” Ashur said. [...]
In November, Somalia’s outspoken defense minister, Ahmed Fiqi, said he would seek answers from AFRICOM about the killing of Abdullahi. Speaking in parliament, Fiqi said that although the intelligence that Somalia’s allies use for strikes is usually sound, there was no reason to kill Abdullahi, a public figure well known to authorities. “We could have called him and asked him questions,” Fiqi said. Read more - Lire plus
| Either ICE Is Abolished or It Will Kill Many More Renee Goods | |
Forever Wars 12/01/2026 - THERE IS NO reforming this.
There is no re-training in deescalation tactics, no reequipping with less-lethal weapons, no transformative changes in leadership, no structural reorganization that has a hope of stopping an agency that recruits with white-supremacist messaging, demands nonwhite Uber drivers show them their papers, abuses people in detention, opens fire with "chemical irritants" at a school in response to a snowball, invades peoples' homes without a warrant, kills witnesses for the slightest perceived disrespect or noncompliance, and then calls them terrorists.
I have been warning in print since at least 2012 that the Department of Homeland Security took a permissive attitude toward terrorism committed by white people. That permissiveness was not, as some typically frame it, hypocrisy. It has always been and always will be exceptionalism, a statement made through policy about whose political violence counts as terrorism and whose never can.
Over many, many years, the response from the most powerful people in politics and journalism to such permissiveness has been avoidance. The blood on Renee Good's airbag is the wages of that avoidance. We are far past the stage of permissiveness with white-supremacist violence inside DHS. We are at the stage of active, enthusiastic commission of it.
ICE and its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, mean to inflict terror upon nonwhites, regardless of citizenship status, and to remove them from the country. Their ambitions do not stop there. The murder of Renee "Dude, I'm not mad at you" Good by the ICE agent Jonathan "fucking bitch" Ross shows that they view anyone who even slightly resists them as their enemy. These agencies, created and shaped by the War on Terror, recapitulate the prevailing right-wing sentiment after 9/11 that the institutions and political forces that do or could restrain the War on Terror are themselves complicit in terrorism.
As many have observed, the seemingly confusing decision by the administration to highlight footage of Good's execution that clearly shows Good posed no threat to Ross makes sense as a statement to its base about who is worthy of death: a woman who is slightly in their way, and whose wife displays deserved and very mild contempt for the invading force out to kidnap her neighbors. The message is: Wouldn't you also want to put three through that fucking bitch's forehead?
ICE, and I include CBP in that shorthand, has long deserved abolition for what it does to migrants. Read this piece of mine. And this one. And this one. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody just in the last year, the highest total in ICE's 22 years of existence. It so happens that the dehumanization of migrants has been so thorough, and gone so unchallenged, for so long that now ICE and its allies are determined to fatally silence random normies who aren't comfortable with the deportation force unleashed on their streets. It should never have gotten to this point. But here we are.
Kristi Noem revealed more than she thought when she gave a press conference behind a placard that read ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS. ICE has always been inherently tethered to nativism. There is no rationale for a federal deportation agency on the hunt in the interior of the country that does not conceive of the immigrant as a national-security threat, and it can only survive through the politics that frames immigrants that way. The creation of such an agency had to be laundered as a counterterrorism force. Its operations, redolent of the exceptionalism referenced above, unavoidably enforce a racist social hierarchy. But never before in its 22 years of existence has DHS declared that it means harm, with lethal force on the table, to Americans with different politics. Now it is declaring that while deportations are cool and all, what would really be based is to operate as a death squad.
The brazen nature of Noem's slogan immediately conceals the fact that Ross is living and Good is not. ICE never lost "one of ours," not once, no matter how much Tom Homan wants to play victim. Government agents who wear plate carriers to kidnap day laborers and Uber drivers are not the ones in danger. They are the danger. They are looking for any excuse to show you what "all of yours" means. This is the necrotic tissue of a rotting United States, displayed proudly.
An awful lot of people in politics and journalism who have avoided this rot are going to persist in doing so. The folly of the Obama and Biden people, in their unwillingness to confront the rot they presided over, was to think they could continue in constrained form the operations of the War on Terror without fueling the nativist politics of the War on Terror. Such people are going to consider this newsletter edition hysterical. When they seek to govern again, they will do so by attempting to channel the outrage generated by this moment while rejecting abolition. They must have Renee Good's bloody airbag shoved in their faces until they have no choice but to champion abolition or get out of its way. There can be no accommodation of a security agency that targets the public. Any politician or take-merchant who seeks such accommodation brings us closer to the day when ICE puts three between the eyes of someone you love. [...]
ICE must be abolished. CBP, at an absolute minimum, must be restrained by legislation from operating within the hundred-mile-from-a-port-of-entry envelope that current law defines as "the border." DHS must be broken and scattered to the bureaucratic winds. Ross must be charged and prosecuted for Good's death. Everyone within the ICE detention chains of command where 32 people have died just in the past year must to be investigated for neglect, or worse, and charged accordingly. Ahead of abolition—but never as a substitute for it—DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that Ross "acted according to his training," so that training, with its lax permissions for lethal force exposed in earlier iterations by Lila Hassan, must be investigated and revealed to the public. ICE's ballooning budget and its recruiting plus-up, which many journalists who cover this stuff presume is drawing from right-wing militias, must be stripped from the federal budget. It should be illegal to make money off a deportation force. Read more - Lire plus
Trump’s Justice Department and FBI are expanding his smear campaign against Renee Nicole Good – and trying to go after so-called ‘left-wing terror networks.’
Exclusive: Secret ICE Programs Revealed: Leaked documents detail the dizzying scope of ICE operations
ICE Detention Expands Dramatically; 70,000 Immigrants Now Jailed, Deaths Increase
Cover-Up Fears Mount as FBI Cuts Minnesota Investigators Out of Deadly ICE Shooting Probe
“Stolen from Us”: Family Demands Justice for Keith Porter, Black Father Killed by Off-Duty ICE Agent
Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz
NEW ACTION Shut down "Alligator Alcatraz" — and every cruel detention center
NOUVELLE ACTION Droits humains et Alligator Alcatraz : quel est le rôle de Garda World dans ce centre de détention?
ICE Arresting U.S. Citizens, Using Banned Chokeholds: Explosive ProPublica Report
| | Revealed: FBI opened domestic terrorism investigations into anti-ICE activity across US | |
The Guardian 19/12/2025 - The FBI has launched “criminal and domestic terrorism investigations” into “threats against immigration enforcement activity” in at least 23 regions across the US, according to an internal report shared with the Guardian.
The two-page FBI document, dated 14 November, says some of the investigations are related to the “countering domestic terrorism” memo issued by Donald Trump in September.
Released after the killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump’s memo, known as NSPM-7, called for a “national strategy” to thwart “violent and terroristic activities” associated with “anti-fascism”. It described “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity” as threats and cited “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland, referring to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as examples of “political violence”.
The FBI document, disseminated to other law enforcement agencies, warns of increased “threat activity targeting government personnel or facilities related to immigration enforcement efforts”. It points to two violent attacks against ICE facilities in Texas, but says “domestic terrorist subjects”, who fall under NSPM-7, have also engaged in “reactive violent attacks which took advantage of First Amendment-protected activities nationwide”.
“[Domestic terrorist] attacks against ICE continue to be perpetrated primarily by individuals or small groups of actors,” the report continued, asserting that recent incidents marked “an escalation in violence compared to past attacks, which primarily resulted in property damage”. The document says “indicators” that an individual may be planning to attack ICE include “stockpiling or distributing firearms”, but also “conducting online research” about agents’ movements and using encrypted messaging apps.
The FBI report was republished by another law enforcement entity and disclosed in documents obtained through public records requests by Property of the People, a government transparency non-profit. Civil rights groups have raised concerns that NSPM-7 would be used to crack down on leftist organizing, ICE protesters and Trump critics, and advocates who reviewed the FBI’s November report for the Guardian said it renewed their fears.
“[The FBI document] is infused with vague and overbroad language, which was exactly our concern about NSPM-7 in the first place. It invites law enforcement suspicion and investigation based on purely first amendment-protected beliefs and activities,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “People who are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing can be subjected to surveillance or investigation. That imposes stigma. It can wrongly immesh people in the criminal legal system.” The FBI declined to comment. Read more - Lire plus
The Feds Keep Prosecuting Protesters Against ICE — and Losing
Inside DoJ’s controversial prosecution of a Texas ‘antifa cell’ charged with terrorism
Longtime Paid FBI Informant Was Instrumental in Terror Case Against “Turtle Island Liberation Front”
| | White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List | | The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would order the killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other queries. | | |
The Intercept 12/12/2025 - President Donald Trump has shattered the limits of executive authority by ordering the summary executions of individuals he deems members of designated terrorist organizations. He has also tested the bounds of his presidential powers by creating a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations, established under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7.
Are Americans that the federal government deems to be members of domestic terrorist organizations subject to extrajudicial killings like those it claims are members of designated terrorist organizations? The White House, Justice Department, and Department of War have, for more than a month, failed to answer this question.
Lawmakers and other government officials tell The Intercept that the pregnant silence by the Trump administration has become especially worrisome as the death toll mounts from attacks on alleged members of “designated terrorist organizations” in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and as Trump himself makes ever more unhinged threats to imprison or execute his political adversaries.
In early September, The Intercept revealed that elite Special Operators killed the shipwrecked victims of a September 2 attack on a suspected drug smuggling boat. They have since struck more than 20 other vessels. The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U.S. is engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations” it refuses to name. Experts and lawmakers say these killings are outright murders — and that Trump could conceivably use similar lethal force inside the United States.
“The Trump Administration is trying to justify blowing small boats out of the water by arbitrarily calling them ‘designated terrorist organizations’ — a label not grounded in U.S. statute nor international law, but in solely what Trump says,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., told The Intercept. “If Trump is using this justification to use military force on any individuals he chooses — without verified evidence or legal authorization — what’s stopping him from designating anyone within our own borders in a similar fashion and conducting lethal, militarized attacks against them? This illegal and dangerous misuse of lethal force should worry all Americans, and it can’t be accepted as normal.”
For almost a quarter century, the United States has been killing people — including American citizens, on occasion — around the world with drone strikes. Beginning as post-9/11 counterterrorism operations, these targeted killings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and other nations relied on a flimsy legal rationale that consistently eroded respect for international law. Details of these operations were kept secret from the American people, and civilian casualties were ignored, denied, and covered up. The recent attacks on alleged drug boats lack even the rickety legal rationale of the drone wars, sparking fear that there is little to stop the U.S. government from taking the unprecedented step of military action against those it deems terrorists within the nation’s borders.
The military has carried out 22 known attacks in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 87 civilians. Last week, footage of the September 2 double-tap strike shown to select members of Congress ignited a firestorm. Trump announced, on camera, that he had “no problem” with releasing the video of the attack. This week, he denied ever saying it, in another example of his increasingly unbalanced behavior.
“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians as lawful and why it believes it can hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to people committing these crimes,” said Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, on Tuesday, as the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit for the immediate release of a classified Justice Department’s opinion and other documents related to the attacks on boats. “The Trump administration must stop these illegal and immoral strikes, and officials who have carried them out must be held accountable.”
Since October, The Intercept has been asking if the White House would rule out conducting summary executions of members of the list “of any such groups or entities” designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s]” under NSPM-7, without a response. Similar questions posed to the Justice and War departments have also been repeatedly ignored, despite both departments offering replies to myriad other queries. The Justice Department responded with a statement that did not answer the question. “Political violence has no place in this country, and this Department of Justice will investigate, identify, and root out any individual or violent extremist group attempting to commit or promote this heinous activity,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.
“The Trump administration should answer all questions about the terrorist lists,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told The Intercept. “The American people have a right to answers about who is on them and what that means for all of us.”
Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department lawyer, notes that while the designated terrorist organization label as a targeting authority is “entirely manufactured,” the administration is relying on it to summarily execute people in the boat strikes, making their application of the terrorist label on the domestic front especially concerning. “Many of us have warned that there seems to be no legal limiting principle to the Administration’s claims of authority to use force and to kill people,” Ingber, now a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York, told The Intercept. “This is one of the many reasons it is so important that Congress push back on the President’s claim that he can simply label transporting drugs an armed attack on the United States and then claim the authority to summarily execute people on that basis.” [...]
“Trump’s NSPM-7 represses freedom of speech and association. Investigating any organization with anti-capitalism or anti-American views is anti-American. NSPM-7 is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act,” said Khanna. “We’re seeing the greatest erosion of civil liberties and human rights in our modern history.”
NSPM-7 directs Bondi to compile a list “of any such groups or entities” to be designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s]” and Bondi has ordered the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo disclosed by reporter Ken Klippenstein on Saturday. The department also shared the December 4 memo, “Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” with The Intercept.
The Justice Department memo notes that under Section 3 of NSPM-7, “the FBI, in coordination with its partners on the [Joint Terrorism Task Forces], and consistent with applicable law, shall compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” and “provide that list to the Deputy Attorney General.” (The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are located in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices and specifically “support President Trump’s executive orders,” according to a top FBI official.) Read more - Lire plus
Supreme Court right to block Trump's deployment of Texas Guard to Chicago
| | Calling for Closure of Guantánamo after 24 Years – A Joint Statement | Ahead of the 24th anniversary of Guantánamo’s opening, 116 organizations signed this statement led by the Center for Victims of Torture and the Center for Constitutional Rights reaffirming that it must be closed, without repurposing it for any future detention regime, and that there must be redress for individuals who were held and whose rights were violated. | |
CVT 09/01/2026 - January 11, 2026 is the shameful 24th anniversary of the opening of the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. We, the undersigned 116 U.S.-based and international non-governmental organizations – working on a range of issues, including international human rights, immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and combatting anti-Muslim discrimination – again call for its closure.
For two decades, we have advocated for closing Guantánamo and for accountability for post-9/11 U.S. policies that evade due process and condone torture. The Guantánamo detention facility – built on the same military base where the United States unconstitutionally detained Haitian refugees in deplorable conditions in the early 1990s – is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law. The detention facility was designed specifically to evade legal constraints, and Bush administration officials incubated torture there. Since 2002, nearly 800 men have been detained at Guantánamo’s military detention facility, all of them Muslim, and the majority having never been charged with a crime.
Today, 15 men remain indefinitely detained, including three who have long been cleared for release by U.S. national security agencies. Many of them were tortured by the CIA or the U.S. military after 9/11 and now, two decades on, are aging and presenting complex medical conditions that DOD officials have acknowledged Guantánamo cannot manage. The interminable military commissions have failed to deliver any measure of justice for 9/11.
The failure of past administrations to close Guantánamo continues to cause escalating and profound harm to the men who still languish there. It has also enabled what many feared, and against which we and others repeatedly warned: the repurposing of Guantánamo to detain others unlawfully.
Since February 2025, over 700 immigrants – most transported from the United States – have been temporarily detained at both Guantánamo’s Migrant Operations Center and Camp 6, part of the military detention facility. These individuals have been subjected to inhumane treatment, including prolonged isolation, denial of legal counsel, and degrading conditions. Additionally, many were sent to other countries without individualized assessments whether they might face torture and persecution.
It is precisely due to the lack of accountability for post-9/11 U.S. crimes that this is happening. The Trump administration’s reprehensible decision to hold immigrants, including asylum seekers and refugees, unlawfully in a facility notorious for human rights abuses is made possible by the systematic erosion of the rule of law in the name of national security by Democrats and Republicans alike. A longstanding culture of impunity has facilitated the Trump administration’s efforts to militarize immigration enforcement through wartime authorities and counterterrorism policies; to invoke Guantánamo’s horrific legacy; and to leverage the United States’ reputation as torturers to terrorize and vilify immigrants.
As organizations committed to human rights and the rule of law, we reaffirm a unified and unequivocal call:
Transfer without delay the six men who are not charged with a crime; end the failed military commissions and resolve pending cases; permanently close Guantánamo, without repurposing the facility for any future detention regime; hold perpetrators of U.S. crimes accountable; and provide redress to those whose fundamental human rights the U.S. has violated. Source
Former attorney general urges more clarity on British spy agencies’ role in Abu Zubaydah’s torture by CIA
Abu Zubaydah remains in Guantanamo despite UK compensation for involvement in his torture
Judge Rejects Effort to Return Man Accused in 9/11 Plot to Guantánamo Trial
U.S. Appeals Court Won’t Take Up Case to Resurrect 9/11 Plea Deal
| | Australia’s NSW passes tough anti-protest, gun laws after Bondi attack | Palestinian, Jewish and Indigenous groups say they will launch constitutional challenge to anti-protest laws described as ‘rushed’. | |
Al Jazeera 24/12/2025 - The state of New South Wales (NSW) will have the toughest gun laws in Australia as well as wide-reaching new restrictions on free speech in the wake of the Bondi Beach mass shooting, which left 15 people dead.
Less than two weeks after the attack on a Jewish celebration, new legislation was passed by the state’s legislative assembly in the early hours of Wednesday morning, including restrictions that appear to target speech in solidarity with Palestinians.
Notably, the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 gives police powers to restrict public protests for up to three months “following a terrorism declaration”, while the public display of symbols of prohibited organisations will be banned.
“Once a declaration is made, no public assemblies can be authorised in designated areas, including by a court and police will be able to move people on if their behaviour or presence obstructs traffic or causes fear, harassment or intimidation,” the NSW government said in a statement.
In the statement, NSW Premier Chris Minns and other top officials said that the sweeping changes would involve a review of “hate speech” and the words “globalise the Intifada” were singled out as an example of speech that will be banned. The term is often used in solidarity with Palestinians and their civil struggle against Israeli military occupation and illegal settlement expansion, dating back to the 1980s.
Minns acknowledged that the new laws involved “very significant changes that not everyone will agree with” but he added, “our state has changed following the horrific anti-Semitic attack on Bondi Beach and our laws must change too.” He also said that new gun laws, which restrict certain types of guns to use by farmers, would also help to “calm a combustible situation”.
Constitutional challenge
Three NSW-based pro-Palestinian, Indigenous and Jewish advocacy groups said on Tuesday, before the final vote on the legislation, that they would be “filing a constitutional legal challenge against the draconian anti-protest laws”. Palestine Action Group Sydney said in a statement shared on Facebook that it was launching the challenge together with the Indigenous group Blak Caucus and Jews Against the Occupation ’48.
“These outrageous laws will grant NSW Police sweeping powers to effectively ban protests,” the Palestinian advocacy group said, accusing the NSW government of “exploiting the horrific Bondi attack to advance a political agenda that suppresses political dissent and criticism of Israel, and curtails democratic freedoms”.
Changes to the state’s protest laws also come just months after more than 100,000 people marched over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, after a court overturned an attempt by the Minns government to try to stop the peaceful protest from taking place.
Following the huge display of public support for ending Israel’s war on Gaza, Australia joined more than 145 other UN member states in recognising Palestinian statehood at the United Nations in September this year, much to the outrage of Israeli officials. Within hours of the Bondi attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), linked the shooting to Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood.
UN special rapporteur Ben Saul, who is also an international law chair at the University of Sydney, criticised Netanyahu’s comments. Saul, whose UN mandate focuses on ensuring human rights are protected while countering terrorism, called for a “measured response to the Bondi terrorist attack”. “Overreach does not make us safer.” Saul said in a post on social media. Read more - Lire plus
Jonathan Cook: Open letter to Met police chief: Let me tell you what 'Globalise the intifada' actually means
Banning organisations has a sorry history – does Australia really want to go down this road again?
| | OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | | ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC | | The Justice Minister must end the injustice against Hassan Diab! | | |
In April 2023, despite clear exculpatory evidence, the French Court of Assize conducted an in absentia trial that unjustly declared Dr. Hassan Diab guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. The proceedings amounted to a sham trial and a mockery of justice.
Since that ruling, Dr. Diab and his family have lived in constant uncertainty, facing the ongoing threat that a second extradition request could be made at any time.
Please click below to send a new letter demanding that Justice Minister Sean Fraser categorically refuse any future extradition request and put an end—once and for all—to this ongoing miscarriage of justice.
| |
Canada: Abolish rights-violating terrorist entities list!
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On October 15, 2024, the Canadian government placed the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network on Canada’s terrorist entities list. While ostensibly a tool to protect the safety and security of people in Canada and internationally, the list is an arbitrary political tool that undermines freedom of association, of expression and due process in the courts. Its effectiveness as a national security tool has never been demonstrated in a manner that justifies its use.
Due to these deep flaws, and more, the ICLMG has consistently called for the list to be abolished since the Canadian coalition’s founding in 2002. Please join us in urging the Canadian government to abolish the rights-violating terrorist entities list once and for all. Thank you!
| | Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now! | Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts. United Nations officials have even found that the conditions faced by Canadians in prison are akin to torture. Please click below to urge the federal government to repatriate all Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay. | | 22 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now! | | CSIS isn't above the law! | | |
In recent years, at least three court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.
Send a message to the Public Safety Minister demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable. Your message will also be sent to your MP and to the Minister of Justice.
| | Reform Canada's extradition law now! | |
Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.
Click below to send a message to urge the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice and your MP to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. Thank you!
Version française: Le Canada doit réformer la loi sur l'extradition!
| | Canada must protect encryption! | |
Canada, with other G7 nations, continues to push to weaken our access to strong, reliable encryption, after decades of being supportive of strong encryption. We need encryption to safeguard our data, our online transactions, our communications, and to protect the lives of journalists and human rights activists.
Please send a message to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Public Safety, as well as your Member of Parliament, to urge them to reverse course and once again commit to protecting encryption.
Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir
| | Protect our rights from facial recognition! | Facial recognition surveillance is invasive and inaccurate. This unregulated tech poses a threat to the fundamental rights of people across Canada. Federal intelligence agencies refuse to disclose whether they use facial recognition technology. The RCMP has admitted (after lying about it) to using facial recognition for 18 years without regulation, let alone a public debate regarding whether it should have been allowed in the first place. Send a message to the Prime Minister and the Public Safety Minister calling for a ban now. | | What we’ve been up to from January to May 2025 and our plan for the rest of the year | |
ICLMG 30/05/2025 - Thanks to the support of our members and donors, here is what we were able to work on so far in 2025 :
- Open letter to the new Prime Minister and government
- 2025 federal election and National Security Info Card
- C-20: First independent watchdog for the CBSA
- C-27: Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022
- Online Harms
- Foreign Interference
- Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
- Canada’s terrorist entities list
- Palestine and the right to dissent
- Impacts of Counter terrorism financing
- Hassan Diab & Extradition
- Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- And more!
What we have planned for the rest of 2025!
We have our work cut out for us! In response to threats of tariffs and annexation from the Trump administration, the Canadian government has problematically committed to the rapid expansion of border security, surveillance and information sharing with the US, and expanded the use of rights violating anti-terrorism tools. We also cannot ignore the US crackdown on protesters and migrants under the guise of fighting terrorism and protecting national security. We need to ensure that Canada disentangles itself from the US national security regime, resists US pressure to expand surveillance and counter-terror powers and tools at the expense of our civil liberties, and increases protections for privacy, dissent, migrants and asylum seekers.
We will continue our work on these issues and much more:
- Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for good privacy law reform
- Addressing the lack of regulation on the use of AI in national security
- Advocating for restrictions on Canadian information sharing with the US, including the application of the US No Fly List in Canada
- Campaigning for the repeal of secretive and rights violating national security lists, such as the Terrorist Entities List and the Canadian No Fly List
- Halting the rapid expansion of new security measures at the border and continuing to push back against the false narrative depicting migrants and refugees as security risks, and advocating for rights protection and accountability for border agencies, including by monitoring the creation of a new CBSA and RCMP watchdog agency
- Advocating with lawmakers and officials to protect civil liberties from the overall negative impact of national security
- Countering the escalating repression of free expression, dissent and protest in the name of “countering terrorism,” including the crackdown on protests in support of Palestinian human rights and against the genocide in Gaza. This includes countering new “bubble zone” laws at the municipal and federal levels
- Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
- Fighting for Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada's extradition law
- Addressing the impacts of measures to counter terrorism financing on civil society groups, including the CRA’s targeting of Muslim-led charities and restrictions and criminalization of the provision of international assistance and humanitarian aid
- Calling for the return of Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children, who remain indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
- Pushing for restrictions on the implementation of new foreign interference laws
- Keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest
- And much more! Read more - Lire plus
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| | Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | | |
THANK YOU
to our amazing supporters!
We would like to thank all our member organizations, and the hundreds of people who have supported us over the years, including on Patreon! As a reward, we are listing below our patrons who give $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
James Deutsch
Bill Ewanick
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
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