|
International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
April 11, 2026 - 11 avril 2026
| Bimonthly news round-up about national security's negative impact on civil liberties in Canada and abroad | | C-22: New “Lawful Access” Bill will Supercharge Government Surveillance and Undermine Privacy | | |
ICLMG 07/04/2026 - The federal government’s latest attempt to grant police and intelligence agencies easier access to the private information of people in Canada, if enacted, will supercharge state surveillance and seriously threaten privacy rights, says the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG).
“This legislation presents one of the greatest threats to privacy in Canada of the past two decades,” said Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the ICLMG, a Canadian coalition devoted to defending civil liberties in the context of anti-terrorism and national security. “Its provisions will weaken the rules governing police access to personal information, all while facilitating a vast expansion of government surveillance. This is another clear case of the decades-long trend of governments using national security as an excuse to erode civil liberties and human rights. We are encouraging all members of parliament to oppose these new powers.”
On March 12, 2026, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. It follows the government’s attempt to introduce a wide-ranging omnibus border and security bill, known as Bill C-2, in June 2025. That previous bill was heavily criticized for threatening a wide range of Charter-protected rights; this includes sections of Bill C-2 that are nearly identical to the new Bill C-22. The government was eventually forced to shelve Bill C-2 under the prospect that it would never receive the necessary support in a minority government.
Bill C-22 is more limited in scope than its predecessor, focusing solely on lawful access, and includes some modifications that attempt to respond to previous criticisms. However, not only do these changes not go far enough, but the government has added a new data retention provision to Bill C-22 that raises significant additional privacy concerns.
The bill is divided into two sections: Timely Access to Data and Information (TADI), which grants police and intelligence officers easier access to personal information, and the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act (SAAIA), which would force a broad range of “electronic service providers” (ESPs) to modify their systems in order to facilitate law enforcement access to the information they may hold or that pass through their systems, including the ability to require ESPs to retain information related to private communications for up to a year.
Of greatest concern are the provisions of the SAAIA, the second part of Bill C-22. This Act would grant the Minister of Public Safety the power to issue secret orders to all digital platforms that “make available information in electronic, digital or any other intangible form.” This isn’t only Facebook, Instagram or Gmail, which would be concerning enough, but also includes online retailers ranging from Amazon to your local bookstore, or service providers that allow you to book appointments or communicate online, like mental health professionals or financial institutions. These orders could require service providers to modify their systems in any way the government deems necessary, including installing surveillance systems that could be used by law enforcement or other government agents to monitor or collect private communications if they receive lawful authorization to access the information, for example, through a warrant or other legislative powers, such as CSIS collection of datasets (see more below). In a new addition to the SAAIA, that wasn’t in the original Bill C-2, the government could also order these companies to proactively retain metadata—for example, information about our communications, like the sender, caller, recipient, location, date and time—for up to a year, just because it may eventually be useful.
General provisions covering the largest companies would be issued through public regulations, but ministerial orders directed at a specific service provider will be issued in secret and will not require judicial authorization, simply approval from the Intelligence Commissioner. While this role is held by a retired federal judge, it in no way replaces scrutiny by the courts, or better yet, by the public.
The risks are very real: the more backdoors are created to access private communications, and the more companies are forced to retain our personal information, the greater the likelihood of hacks, leaks and misuse. While there are provisions in the bill to ostensibly guarantee that government orders will not create systemic vulnerabilities that would undermine data protections like encryption, these vulnerabilities would still be acceptable in circumstances where the government believes there is a low risk that they could be exploited by bad actors. However, we know that once these kinds of vulnerabilities exist, they become targets for hackers and foreign intelligence agencies. And this is to say nothing of the fact that these kinds of vulnerabilities can also be misused by domestic law enforcement and intelligence agencies, or the fact that once “backdoors” or other weaknesses are introduced into encryption, it is for all intents and purposes broken.
Compounding all this is the fact that government agencies have been granted expanded data collection authorities over the past decade. This includes the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) now being allowed to collect entire “datasets” of information. Forcing companies to structure their systems and information holdings in ways that ease CSIS’s access could result in vast new amounts of information being collected not because they relate to a particular threat, but because they can be used for analytics, threat predictions and other secret uses.
Part 1 of the bill, Timely Access to Data and Information, has been changed in one significant way: It narrows Bill C-2’s previously broad powers for police and intelligence agents to require companies that offer services to the public to provide information about account holders without a warrant. Instead, such requests would now be restricted to telecommunication service providers (TSP) and to simple yes/no answers about whether a TSP holds an account associated with an individual’s name, email, phone number, etc. While narrower, the precedent of allowing officers to request information without a warrant, based only on the suspicion, rather than the belief, that the information would be of use in investigating a crime, is still alarming, and raises concerns that it could be broadened in the future as it gains acceptance.
Unfortunately, other serious problems in this section of the legislation have not been addressed, including:
- Creating a new “production order” power based on the very low threshold of “reasonable grounds to suspect” for police to obtain personal information about the clients of any entity that provides a service to the public (known as “subscriber information”).
-
Allowing Canadian law enforcement to request this information from foreign entities, and creating a new regime allowing foreign governments and agencies to request information held in Canada.
“Time after time, federal governments of all stripes have attempted to weaken privacy protections under the name of ‘lawful access’—and yet each time, including with Bill C-2, they have failed to justify the need and been forced to back down,” said McSorley. “Bill C-22 is the past repeating itself, and we will continue to work with our partners to challenge this legislation, protect the privacy rights of people in Canada and push back against dangerous expansions of surveillance powers.” Source
NEW ACTION Stop Bill C-22 and its expansion of the surveillance state!
Video: A former Trudeau advisor criticizes the Carney Liberals on CBC for pushing Canada toward a surveillance state with Bill C-22
| | Joint Statement: Senate Must Ensure Thorough Review of Bill C-9 to Protect Civil Liberties and Fundamental Freedoms | | |
ICLMG et al. 02/04/2026 - The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Amnesty International Canadian Section, Independent Jewish Voices, la Ligue des droits et libertés, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, and The Centre for Free Expression, reaffirm our deep concern about Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, following its passage at third reading in the House of Commons. We remain firmly of the view that this legislation, in its current form, risks undermining the very rights and freedoms it purports to defend.
Since Bill C-9’s introduction in Parliament, our organizations have engaged constructively with parliamentarians, providing detailed legal analyses, policy recommendations, and testimonies at the Justice committee. In parallel, a broad coalition of civil liberties organizations, advocacy organizations, Muslim organizations, Jewish organizations, and Christian organizations issued multiple joint statements and submissions expressing serious concerns about the bill’s scope and potential impacts on fundamental freedoms.
Despite these efforts, the government has moved the legislation without meaningfully addressing many of the substantive concerns raised by communities – and actually made the bill worse by removing the Criminal Code’s good-faith religious defense without putting anything adequate in its place.
The forced advancement of Bill C-9 through Parliament raises serious concerns about the integrity of the legislative process. Legislation of this scope and consequences, directly affecting fundamental freedoms, criminal law, and the scope of state power, demands careful, transparent, and inclusive deliberation. Instead, the federal government forced Bill C-9 to move forward without adequate time to meaningfully consider amendments proposed by civil society organizations, faith communities, legal experts, and directly impacted communities. The outcome is legislation that has not undergone the rigorous scrutiny necessary to protect constitutional rights and guard against unintended consequences.
Bill C-9 introduces vague and overly broad provisions that risk criminalizing lawful expression, peaceful protest, and legitimate dissent. By expanding offences tied to subjective concepts such as “fear”, the legislation creates significant legal uncertainty and opens the door to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. New overly-broad obstruction offences risk criminalizing otherwise lawful protests. The broadening of hate propaganda provisions to include the display of symbols tied to the discretionary and politicized terrorist entities list will not only expand the use of controversial anti-terrorism powers, it will grant police subjective powers to determine whether an image simply resembles a prohibited image or slogan. These provisions threaten to chill public discourse and undermine Charter protected rights, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association.
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism are on the rise. Communities across this country are worried, and they deserve protection. But Bill C-9 doesn’t solve this complex issue. To be clear: punitive laws that criminalize expression do not stop hatred. They hand governments a blunt tool that tends to be disproportionately used against Indigenous communities, racialized communities, faith groups, and protesters. Rather than addressing the root cause of hate, Bill C-9 risks further entrenching existing inequities within the justice system. The outcome will not be greater safety, but greater surveillance, over policing, and further marginalization of already vulnerable communities.
At a time when Canadians are seeking unity, justice, and accountability, efforts to combat hate must not come at the expense of the fundamental freedoms that define our democracy.
- We call on the Senate of Canada to address the shortcomings in the legislative process by undertaking broader and more meaningful consultations, particularly with communities that were not adequately heard.
- We call on the Senate of Canada to reject Bill C-9 and vote against its passage. Should the Senate proceed with its consideration, we urge Senators to introduce the necessary amendments and safeguards to mitigate the risks this legislation poses to religious freedoms, civil liberties, and constitutionally protected rights.
A careful, inclusive, and rights-respecting approach is essential to ensure that measures intended to combat hate do not erode the very freedoms they seek to protect. Source
NEW ACTION Senators must stop C-9 and protect our rights!
| | Criticism of Bill C-12 grows over risks to the health of refugees and migrants | | |
RCI 03/04/2026 - Opposition to the law is not limited to the health sector and organisations providing direct services to refugees.
A broad coalition of human rights, civil liberties, migration, gender justice, and privacy organisations has condemned Bill C-12 for undermining the safeguards that protect the health of refugees and migrants.
The statement also notes that the Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology recommended removing parts of the bill on grounds of human rights, privacy, and due process.
Among the voices in this coalition, Tim McSorley of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group described it as outrageous and hypocritical that the Canadian government is using the argument of national security and border integrity to adopt regressive and dangerous immigration measures.
According to him, the Senate Social Affairs Committee was right to recommend that all immigration measures in that legislation be removed. “We will continue to work alongside others in the human rights, civil liberties, and migrant and refugee rights sectors to address the impacts of the legislation and push back against further xenophobic legislation falsely portraying migrants and refugees as security threats,” he added.
Tim McSorley’s appearance before the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology as part of its review of Bill C-12, prior to its passage, during which he stated that the ‘Strengthening Canada’s Immigration and Border System Act’ infringes on rights and is xenophobic:
Another strong voice within that coalition was that of Julia Sande of Amnesty International Canada, who said that Bill C-12 jeopardises Canada’s self-image – not to mention its international reputation – as a safe and welcoming haven for people fleeing war, persecution and torture.
According to her, by making the refugee protection system less accessible to those who need it, there is a risk of pushing people into terrible situations where they may face violence, discrimination, or even death.
The coalition also warned that recent immigration measures are part of a trend towards greater state discretion and the erosion of rights. In this context, it pointed out that the debate on refugees’ health cannot be separated from the broader discussion on protection, privacy, and due process. Read more - Lire plus
Canada will cancel thousands of refugee claims under new retroactive law
Canada’s immigration law may compromise rights, UN committee says
C-12 is now law. Find out how you are affected.
| | Enemies of the State: How spying on Indigenous activists became a priority at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service | | |
Monday, April 13, 2026 from 4:30pm to 6:00pm
With Ellen Gabriel and Brett Forester
In-person event (might be recorded)
RC 4400, SJC Resource Centre, Richcraft Hall, Carleton University; 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
Space will be limited for this event. Please register using the form at the bottom of the page.
How much time and effort has Canada spent spying on Indigenous activists? In 2022, Brett Forester of CBC Indigenous in Ottawa set out to answer that question. It proved easy enough to ask but nearly impossible to answer. It took three years, four formal access to information requests, one informal request, three complaints to the federal information commissioner and one court challenge, but after all this wrangling we can begin to confirm the long-suspected truth: Snooping on Indigenous peoples has been a priority for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service almost since its inception.
After reviewing more than 1,000 pages of declassified documents, Forester found surveillance that began in Labrador in 1988 with Cold War paranoia about Soviet meddling had by 1998 evolved into a national counterterrorism project monitoring Indigenous dissent as a form of domestic extremism. In this talk, Forester will explain why and how this came to be, as he offers a behind-the-scenes look at his investigation into more than a decade of CSIS’s self-styled “Native extremism” operations. Registration - Inscription
| | Owen Schalk: As Israel eyes executions, Canada targets Palestine solidarity | | |
Canadian Dimension 08/04/2026 - In late March, the federal government moved to dissolve Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an international group of organizers and activists long targeted for criminalization by the Israel lobby in Canada. The move follows changes introduced in the 2025 federal budget granting Ottawa explicit authority to disband organizations designated as “terrorist entities.”
The decision marks a significant escalation in the state’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity, one that coincides with Israel’s own intensifying repression of Palestinians.
Samidoun was founded in 2011 to build solidarity with a Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike. The 22-day strike, which ran from October to November of that year, called for an end to Israeli practices of solitary confinement, the denial of books and newspapers to political prisoners, and the shackling of prisoners during family visits. It also demanded the release of Ahmad Saadat, general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), from isolation. Since then, Samidoun has worked to raise awareness about Palestinian political prisoners and the conditions they face in Israel’s apartheid penal system.
Across Israel and the occupied territories, the Israeli government holds around 10,000 Palestinians in its notoriously brutal network of prisons. Prisoners regularly face torture, starvation, and abuse. Thousands are held without charge or trial. Hundreds of those imprisoned are children—in fact, Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts. Defense for Children Palestine notes that “about 500 to 700 Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system each year—some as young as 12.”
Amid the Canadian state’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity in 2023–2024, the apartheid lobby intensified its campaign to criminalize Samidoun. This long-standing effort rests on the unproven claim that Khaled Barakat, husband of Samidoun founder Charlotte Kates, is associated with the PFLP, an armed resistance organization that the Canadian government has listed as a “terrorist” group since 2003.
In October 2024, apartheid lobbyists got what they wanted. Ottawa announced that Samidoun had been listed as a “terrorist entity” under the Criminal Code. The announcement was made in coordination with the US government, which on the same day designated Samidoun a “specially designated global terrorist” through executive order.
The following month, Vancouver police conducted a militarized raid on the home of Kates, who had previously been arrested for praising Hamas military operations against Israeli occupation forces. The raid involved an armoured vehicle and heavily armed officers. Kates’s neighbour described the operation as “over the top,” adding, “I don’t think it is appropriate to use that much force.” But the show of force was the point. The raid functioned as an intimidation tactic, sending a chilling message through the broader Palestine solidarity movement in Canada.
Such intense political furor and police repression over an alleged association with a Palestinian group exposes a glaring double standard in Canadian political life. One might ask why supposed ties to a Palestinian political organization provoke such outrage, while more than 200 Canadian veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—an army that levelled Gaza and is currently engaged in brutal wars of aggression against Lebanon and Iran—are apparently welcomed home with open arms.
By any metric, the IDF is far more violent and destructive than any Palestinian group. Yet despite a supposed arms embargo, Canada continues to ship weapons to Israel via the United States, and the Liberal government recently voted down a bill aimed at ending these transfers. Indeed, Canada’s “terrorist” list itself appears largely geared toward delegitimizing Palestinian armed struggle against Israeli apartheid and occupation. This is reflected in its disproportionate focus on Palestinian organizations. The list was created in 2001, and by 2022, “over 10 percent of Canada’s terrorist list [was] made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land [Palestine] representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population.”
As Canadian arms fuelled Israel’s assault on Gaza, Minister Dominic LeBlanc claimed that Samidoun’s solidarity activists constituted a “threat to Canada’s national security.” His statement on the group’s designation read:
Violent extremism, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing have no place in Canadian society or abroad. The listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate this type of activity, and will do everything in its power to counter the ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and all people in Canada.
How exactly a solidarity network focused on raising awareness about Palestinian political prisoners constitutes such a “threat” is left unexplained.
On March 30 of this year, three days after the federal government’s database listed Samidoun as “dissolved for non-compliance,” Israel’s parliament passed an ethno-nationalist death penalty bill imposing execution by hanging on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in “terrorist” acts. The same penalty will not apply to Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.
When the bill passed, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—a hardline ethno-nationalist and one of the most powerful figures in Israel—celebrated in the Knesset with a bottle of champagne. He had previously filmed himself in front of a gallows while threatening death for “terrorists.” In the months leading up to the vote, Ben-Gvir and other parliamentarians wore noose-shaped pins on their lapels to promote the mass execution of Palestinians.
The Canadian government has criticized the racist death-by-hanging bill. Foreign Minister Anita Anand noted that it “systematically targets Palestinians” and “adds to a growing list of actions which enables illegal settler violence while dehumanizing the Palestinian people.”
These words ring hollow. In the very same week, Canada forcibly dissolved an important support network for Palestinian political prisoners. The move was part of a years-long campaign to undermine solidarity with Palestine in Canada through censorship, job loss, smear campaigns, state and non-state intimidation, targeted criminalization, and overt police violence.
Canada’s criticism of certain grotesque aspects of Israeli policy means little when the government fundamentally supports a decades-long system of dispossession and ethno-supremacist rule. That support is manifested through weapons transfers, diplomatic backing, and the repression of Palestine solidarity at home.
The criminalization of Samidoun has dismantled a key network for Palestinian prisoner solidarity at precisely the moment such solidarity is most needed. Ottawa can voice its objections to the horrors of Israel’s executions bill all it wants. That does not change the fact that Canada is deeply implicated in the conditions that made such a law possible. Source
NEW ACTION Our call stands: Stop the Prisoners’ Execution Law
Israel’s Death-by-Hanging Law Marks Further “Dehumanization of Palestinians”: B’Tselem
Ottawa rally for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day: Freedom for all political prisoners! April 17 at 5PM
Did Global Affairs Try To Scrub Record Of Israel Arms Transfer?
Say Their Names: MPs Quickly Forget Canadians Killed By Israel
New Report! Divesting from Israeli Occupation, Apartheid, and Genocide: Over $526 billion USD invested in complicit companies by pensions, banks, insurance companies, and other investment managers
| | He spent years defending Tamil refugees. As Minister, he’s refusing to stop a deportation back to danger in Sri Lanka | | Breaking News: The federal court has halted Kumar's deportation. This is a temporary decision, the matter will now go to a judicial review, but it's an important victory for Kumar and his supporters. | | |
The Breach 30/03/2026 - Kumar Thuraisinkam arrived to Canada in a ramshackle cargo ship in 2010, after a perilous, months-long journey across the Pacific Ocean, crammed alongside hundreds of Tamil refugees fleeing genocide in Sri Lanka.
He filed an asylum claim the day the vessel, the MV Sun Sea, docked at Vancouver Island. But 15 years later, Thuraisinkam still lacks status. He has struggled with mental health and addiction challenges stemming from the trauma of the journey. Now, he is set to be deported, despite pleading with the government to stay. The Minister who could stop his deportation knows his plight surprisingly well.
Gary Anandasangaree, the Minister of Public Safety, who has final say on deportations, is also Tamil and came to Canada as a refugee. He spent years advocating for Tamil asylum-seekers like Thuraisinkam.
On the 10-year anniversary of the arrival of the MV Sun Sea, Anandasangaree, who at that time was already an MP, wrote an opinion piece in the Toronto Star decrying the government’s mistreatment of the MV Sun Sea passengers.
Anandasangaree wrote that the government “broke” the refugees “mentally and spiritually” while they were in detention. He referenced a passenger on the MV Sun Sea who had been deported, whom he said the Harper government had sent “to face death at the hands of Sri Lankan authorities” after getting tortured in a government prison. But now, in a position of power to act to defend a fellow Tamil refugee, no intervention has been forthcoming from the Minister.
In fact, according to Thuraisinkam’s lawyer, the government appears determined to deport him. She alleges that border agents introduced deliberate errors into travel documents to justify removing him from Canada.
Multiple court documents confirm that he arrived on the MV Sun Sea in 2010. However, when the Canadian government issued travel papers to Sri Lanka in an effort to deport him, a document stated incorrectly that he had arrived in 2018.
Those who arrived on the MV Sun Sea have a stronger argument for why they would face serious danger if deported. This is largely because of public demonization they faced in Canada after being cast as members of a Tamil liberation group deemed a terrorist organization by the federal government. “I came to Canada because there were problems back home and if I go back, I fear I may face the problems again.” Thuraisinkam told The Breach last week in an interview through a translator. “It’s very difficult.”
Despite Tamil returnees being jailed and tortured in Sri Lanka, the Canadian government hasn’t stopped trying to deport the passengers of the MV Sun Sea. Amid a high-water mark for deportations in Canada, Thuraisinkam’s struggle to stay in Canada illuminates 15 years of anti-immigrant policies that stretch back to the Harper Conservative government, and forward to the present day. Anandasangaree’s Toronto Star article was entitled “We failed the people who fled conflict on the MV Sun Sea.” His Liberal government appears ready to fail them again.
Tamils were branded as “terrorists”
In the summer of 2010 Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative government went on the offensive at the news that 492 Tamil passengers, among them 49 children, were about to arrive on the MV Sun Sea. They were fleeing Sri Lanka a year after the government there had won a 30-year civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
A year earlier, when another boat called the MV Ocean Lady carrying 76 Tamil asylum-seekers had landed, the government vowed to prevent future mass arrivals. But now Harper’s public safety minister Vic Toews escalated his rhetoric further. Even before the MV Sun Sea arrived at port, he called some of its passengers “suspected human smugglers and terrorists,” rather than refugees fleeing a genocide.
Reporting in Canadian media echoed the Harper government’s messaging. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) instructed its staff to “take maximum advantage” of immigration detention for the Tamil passengers, and to “ensure that a deterrent for future arrivals is created.” Using the government’s narrative that these were not legitimate refugee claimants, border agents made security arguments to prolong their detentions—including those of children—and denied many of their asylum claims.
Some passengers were also issued deportation orders. One deportee, Sathyapavan Aseervatham, was jailed after being returned to Sri Lanka in 2011. He said that he was tortured, starved, and left without clothing during his incarceration. Aseervatham died in Sri Lanka the following year in a car crash, with his family and community advocates suspecting that he was murdered. In the aftermath, his lawyer insisted that Sri Lanka was not a safe place for Tamil asylum seekers, and demanded a moratorium on deportations there. But even after this cautionary tale, Canada is still trying to deport MV Sun Sea passengers.
A banner year for deportations
Today, the recent rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Canadian politics and media echoes the Sun Sea era.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre deploys the same language of “queue jumpers” and “illegal migration” that marked Harper’s tenure, while the Trudeau and Carney Liberals have continued his practice of sending Tamil refugee claimants back to the country they crossed an ocean to escape.
The 22,500 people the Carney government deported in 2025 is the highest annual number in the nation’s history. Families and communities have been fighting the removals, pleading in the media to try and keep people in Canada.
Reversing individual deportations is costly and onerous, and growing more so at a time when public xenophobia and anti-immigrant policy are increasing in lockstep. The final hope for any person facing deportation is an intervention by the Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anadasangaree.
Anandasangaree met with and advised most of the MV Sun Sea detainees in 2010 while working as a lawyer. He has described himself as a “principal coordinator for a global community response to the arrival” of Tamil asylum seekers, and has advocated extensively for their rights and dignity, including as an MP.
Anandasangaree announced last year that he was stepping back from national security decisions related to the Tamil community “to ensure that there is no perception of any conflict.”
But he provided few details about the kinds of issues he would no longer handle, and how the government would decide when he needed to recuse himself. The federal Ethics Commission later determined that Anandasangaree was under no legal obligation to be screened from national security issues related to the Tamil community.
The Breach asked Anandasangaree’s office about his current views on MV Sun Sea passengers, and if he planned to intervene in Thuraisinkam’s case. A spokesperson from the Ministry of Public Safety acknowledged our request, but the office did not respond to our questions. Read more - Lire plus
| | It’s been 25 years since Canada locked up this man. The government must finally admit that was wrong | |
Toronto Star 27/03/2026 - It’s been almost 25 years since Canada locked up Hassan Almrei. It’s been 17 since the federal government was forced to release him. And he’s hoping 2026 will be the year Ottawa admits it was wrong the whole time.
Almrei was first arrested in October 2001, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Gripped by anti-Muslim paranoia, Parliament empowered our security state to act on behalf of Canadians’ misplaced anxieties — and run roughshod over due process. With Islamophobic hysteria on the rise again, Almrei’s explosive lawsuit, which seeks millions of dollars in damages, has come at a just time.
“This wrong will be right,” Almrei, who is from Syria, told me by phone earlier this month. “We will correct this mistake.” Canada could spend a small fortune hiring lawyers to fight him in court. Instead, it should agree to settle the case — Almrei is seeking compensation — and state publicly that the government will never again short-circuit the foundations of our legal system for the sake of expediency.
At the heart of the case is a security certificate, the powerful and arcane legal tool that allows the ministers of immigration and public safety to deem non-citizens threats to Canada’s national security and therefore “inadmissible” to the country. These non-citizens can then be detained, immediately and indefinitely, pending deportation. It’s on a security certificate that Almrei was held.
Security certificates existed prior to Sept. 11, 2001, but their scope expanded radically in the months after. They permitted Ottawa to argue cases ex parte (that is, without the accused or their counsel present) and on the basis of evidence not required to be shared with the defendant. Even federal court rulings on security certificates were heavily redacted and classified.
Emails obtained through Almrei’s case file reveal that only one week after 9/11, officials at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service were relishing the “opportunity” to use security certificates to lock up and deport Middle Eastern migrants. They also show the agency’s employees lamenting its “difficulties” winning legal cases under the normal rules. CSIS started on a list of “target names”: expatriates ostensibly linked to extremism, terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Almrei’s name was on it.
Almrei came to Canada in 1999 on a forged passport and claimed refugee status soon after. His family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political organization, and Almrei himself had fought with the Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War. These facts put him at risk of detention or worse in his native Syria. They also put him at risk in Canada. “I fit a certain profile for them,” Almrei said. “I was a like a birthday cake for CSIS.”
The agency put Almrei under surveillance and got a judge to sign off on his security certificate. He was slated for deportation to Syria, but the courts blocked the move owing to the high probability that he would face torture on returning home. He spent five years in provincial jails before the federal government built a special prison for men held on security certificates: the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre. Almrei and two other men who had experienced this Kafkaesque system — Adil Charkaoui and Mohamed Harkat — together challenged the constitutionality of Ottawa’s use of security certificates. In 2007, they won.
As a legal tool, security certificates would remain in use, but the Supreme Court ruled that the government could no longer prosecute cases in total secrecy. “Either the person must be given the necessary information (put against him or her),” the unanimous ruling states, “or a substantial substitute for that information must be found.” Ottawa chose the latter option, creating a new “special advocate” position to review and challenge the government’s evidence.
Under this new system, Almrei was kept in the dark about supposed proof of his radicalism, while Ottawa continued pushing to deport him. It wasn’t until late 2009 that Justice Richard Mosley finally quashed Almrei’s security certificate and ordered his release. He wrote, “there were no reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Almrei had any association with bin Laden” or was involved in a forgery ring. Indeed, there was no evidence to indicate he had ever been a threat at all.
When Almrei left prison, he still hadn’t been shown the government’s evidence against him. (Ottawa eventually dropped its case against Charkoui, although it’s still trying to deport Harkat.) He sued the government in 2010, but without access to the case file, his claim went nowhere. It wasn’t until 2017 that one of Canada’s leading national-security lawyers, Phil Tunley, took up the case. Ottawa was still handing over documents when I spoke to Tunley this month. “Recent disclosures have just blown the lid,” he told me.
The files show what a mess the government’s case really was. CSIS requested foreign intelligence, but it received nothing useful, and some of the information had been obtained under torture. Its officers had a poor grasp of the politics, history and languages of the Middle East — and worse, they relied on plainly unreliable informants. The federal court found one key source “was motivated to embellish their reporting to secure additional compensation.”
CSIS and Ottawa also buried exculpatory evidence, such as a taped phone call in which Almrei said he hoped the 9/11 hijackers weren’t Muslim or Arab, because “the repercussions would be catastrophic.” They accused him of laundering money, claiming a donation he’d made to a girls’ school in Afghanistan had gone to extremist groups. (“That school, it meant so much to me,” he told me.)
Enabled by a system based on secret evidence and closed-door hearings, CSIS had “very early formed an opinion about Almrei on the basis of very little information,” Mosley wrote, accusing the agency of “tunnel vision.” Almrei was more blunt: “They knew they were lying. They were hiding information from the court that was going to clear me from Day 1.”
In the decades since Almrei’s arrest, Ottawa still hasn’t offered an apology or admitted fault in the case. The government hasn’t issued new a security certificate in years, but the legal mechanism remains in place. “This could happen (again) tomorrow,” Almrei said. “It could happen today.” When I asked Justice Minister Sean Fraser for comment, particularly on whether the government was interested in settling the case, Fraser’s office referred my questions to Public Safety Canada, who in turn referred them to CSIS — which is not named in the lawsuit.
I reached Almrei earlier this month in Damascus, where he was visiting family — something he can do freely now, thanks to his Canadian passport and the 2024 overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad. “It seems very quiet here,” he said contentedly. Yet while a lot has changed since Almrei left prison, much remains the same as when he entered it: America is at war in the Middle East, and Islamophobia has become rampant once again.
U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, has created his own shadowy legal process for detaining and deporting migrants (including “terrorist sympathizers” such as university students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza). In Canada last year, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said non-citizens seen attending “hate marches” should be rounded up and deported. And in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has recently insisted there are terrorist “sleeper cells” active in Canada — a claim for which scant evidence exists.
Almrei’s case should remind Canadians where this kind of paranoia can lead. And it offers useful lessons on the importance of due process, transparency and the right to a full defence in our adversarial legal system. That itself is an achievement — but Almrei is also seeking monetary compensation, at least $16 million, for the eight years of life Canada took from him.
“The damage will never go away,” Almrei said, though he added, “money will make some part of my life easier.” It will, for example, cover the obscenely expensive airline tickets he is compelled to purchase to avoid American airspace when travelling, as he remains on the U.S. no-fly list. Tunley said he and Almrei are hoping to settle with the government and bypass the headache of going to trial. “I can’t imagine that the government of Canada, the prime minister, wants to go to court and lose Hassan’s case in a very public and ugly fashion,” he said.
Since being released from prison decades ago — and since Canada stopped trying to deport him — Almrei has been putting his life back together. He received his permanent residency in 2016, and today he works as an immigration consultant, helping newcomers move here legally. He became a Canadian citizen in 2021. That Almrei can visit his home country using a Canadian passport is an important win. Still, the greater victory would be for Canada to finally acknowledge how badly it screwed up some 25 years ago. Source
ACTION Stop Mohamed Harkat's deportation to torture!
| | How Canadian military members violated intelligence-gathering rules during COVID-19 | |
CBC News 07/04/2026 - Canadian Armed Forces members used their own personal social media accounts, computers and networks at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and gathered information about Canadians, violating intelligence-gathering rules, according to a newly released report.
The internal military report obtained by CBC News provides a new look behind the scenes at how a controversial military operation went so wrong. "Everything you could imagine in a military operation went wrong in this case," said national security expert Wesley Wark.
"This is really an amateur effort. It was a badly conceived, badly managed operation that should have never come into existence at all." Military members without training and enough oversight gathered intelligence without even knowing it constituted intelligence, the report said. Multiple units were tasked with collecting information about public opinion, including to help with decision-making during Operation Laser — the military's domestic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That data-mining effort, first reported by the Ottawa Citizen, was part of a series of problematic activities involving an influence campaign that then Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance verbally shut down in April 2020, but some activities carried on for another six months — until Vance issued a written edict.
The newspaper's extensive reporting found senior military leaders viewed the pandemic as a chance to test out propaganda techniques on Canadians and head off civil disobedience by the public.
Senior defence leadership launched a series of internal investigations into a range of practices and conceded the forces went too far and eroded public confidence. The Defence Department recently released one of the investigation reports to CBC News more than four years after an access-to-information request was filed. The report contains new details about what exactly unfolded. A compliance assessment report by a directorate with the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command found three military units were non-compliant with directives while gathering intelligence during Operation Laser between March to July 2020.
Wark said the military, at that time, was excited about trying to influence how people think. This influence campaign, he said, was aimed at trying to make sure Canadians understood the threat posed by COVID-19 and to boost support for the military. It was also a way of trying to create a new doctrine of soft power to counter Russian information activities, he said. But when details about the efforts were publicly exposed, it made the military look "foolish," Wark said.
One of the units involved was called the "Precision Information Team," with the 4th Canadian Division in the Greater Toronto Area, who didn't have a background in intelligence. There weren't enough government-issued laptops, Office 365 licences and virtual private networks (VPNs) available, so they had to use their own from home, the assessment found. The team was tasked with scouring Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook and other websites to measure public opinion about the military's work in Canada to help with planning and decision-making, the report said.
Without enough oversight or training, the team gathered information about Canadians that the government and military's top commander didn't explicitly ask them to collect, the report found. The team also didn't immediately delete the information as required, the report said. The report also flagged this team went beyond what the mission required by monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement.
Another team — under Canadian Joint Operations Command — wrote more than 50 reports, including about political discourse around COVID-19, misinformation and non-government statements about the pandemic online, the assessment report said. The team was told to create social media accounts to "monitor key regional actors," but "deliberately disregarded" an order and used their own personal accounts instead, the report said.
This unit failed to log information it inadvertently collected about Canadians, the report said, when capturing Twitter screenshots of official statements from Canadian political leaders. All three units gathering intelligence failed to use tools that concealed their identity, which risked exposing the military's work and trade secrets, the report said. The investigation found the units also didn't conduct risk assessments like they were supposed to.
"It was a nonsensical operation from beginning to end," said Wark, who is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). Wark said while he can't imagine something so "gross" could happen again, there is a risk because the federal government still hasn't acted on a recommendation made by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians in 2020.
The committee urged Ottawa to introduce legislation governing the military's defence intelligence activities, including what it is authorized to collect about Canadians. "This operation took place in a kind of legal vacuum," said Wark. "And whatever lessons have been learned, the legal vacuum still fundamentally exists." [...]
CBC News asked the Defence Department for a response and to share if there were any breaches of Canadians' privacy on March 25. Despite repeated requests, the department still has not provided a comment. Read more - Lire plus
| | Will any Canadian MP call to cut military ties with Trump-led USA? | |
Yves Engler 07/04/2026 - The US congress or people need to remove Donald Trump. In Canada we need a politician who will demand an immediate pause of US military overflights, officer exchanges and training missions as well as military accords and arms sales so long as the warmongering fanatic is in charge.
On Tuesday morning Trump posted: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
This apparent threat to drop nuclear bombs on Iran follows a series of ever more unhinged posts and actions. In the past few days, the US/Israel war machine has blown up Iranian energy facilities, rail lines, bridges and a synagogue. (Israel is also carrying out endless war crimes in Lebanon from blowing up thousand-year-old towns to demanding people not protect Shia refugees.) On Monday Trump declared, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
With a photo of Trump’s post I asked “Is a single politician calling to cancel any of Canada’s 500 military accords with US? Stop US warplanes flying over Canada? Pause officer exchanges, training missions and joint naval deployments?” To the best of my knowledge no Canadian politician is calling to pause/investigate Canadian ties to the US military except for stopping certain weapons purchases from the US.
That’s not the case in other NATO countries. The secretary general of leftist Spanish party Podemos and former minister, Ione Belarra, posted, “Trump has just launched a full-blown nuclear threat. Trump and Netanyahu are the greatest threat to humanity’s security. Spain must immediately leave NATO and close the military bases in Rota and Morón. We cannot be complicit in this for one more minute.”
In the UK Labour MP and former party whip, Apsana Begum posted, “Trump is warning of complete catastrophe in Iran. Our Government can act and has a choice to make. It can withdraw all access to our military bases, with no overflight, landing or refuelling for the US, or drag the UK into a wider conflict. The British people do not want war.”
Former Labour MP and current Your Party leader, Zarah Sultana, posted a similar statement. Sultana noted, “Donald Trump has threatened to erase ‘a whole civilization’ in Iran and there are fears he may deploy a nuclear weapon. The genocide in Gaza wasn’t enough for them. They want genocide in Iran too. This Labour government is still handing them British bases to launch their illegal wars from. Keir Starmer’s hands are covered in blood.”
There’s something seriously wrong with a self-proclaimed ‘democratic’ political system supposedly ‘representing’ a population of which 55 percent say it should be illegal to join the American military (according to a poll released today by The Maple) yet not a single leading Canadian politician has demanded an immediate pause of all military accords, officer exchanges, training missions, joint naval deployments and weapons sales to the US military so long as the warmongering annexationist fanatic is in office. Source
Des manifestants contre la guerre en Iran demandent à Carney de ne pas s’y joindre
Trump’s Genocidal Threats on Iran Are Enabled by a Vast Apparatus of Destruction
We Called Out the Pentagon for Undercounting U.S. Casualties in Iran. They Keep Doing It.
“Sigh of Relief”: U.S. & Iran Agree to 2-Week Ceasefire, But Israel Keeps Bombing Lebanon
| | Trump’s Secret Wars on the World Keep Expanding | An analysis by The Intercept reveals that the “peace” president has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars. | |
The Intercept 30/03/2026 - President Donald Trump talks endlessly of “peace.” He ran for office promising to keep the United States out of conflicts, claims to be a “peacemaker,” has campaigned for a Nobel Peace Prize, and founded a so-called Board of Peace. “Under Trump we will have no more wars,” he said on the campaign trail in 2024. Yet Trump has immersed the U.S. in constant conflict, outpacing even other presidential warmongers like Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
The White House and Pentagon won’t tell the American people where the U.S. is at war, and Trump has never gone to Congress for war authorization. But an analysis by The Intercept reveals that Trump has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars during his five-plus years in the White House. Due to a lack of government transparency, obscure security cooperation, and carveouts baked into the U.S. Code — like the 127e authority enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the covert action statute that enables the CIA to conduct secret wars — the actual number could be markedly higher.
During his two terms in office, Trump has overseen armed interventions and military operations — including drone strikes, ground raids, proxy wars, 127e programs, and full-scale conflicts — in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, and an unspecified country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as attacks on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. More than 6,500 U.S. Special Operations forces’ “operators and enablers” are currently deployed in more than 80 countries around the world. And during its second term, the Trump administration has also bullied Panama and threatened Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (perhaps also Iceland), and Mexico.
Under the U.S. Constitution, it’s Congress that has the authority to declare war, not the president, pointed out Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “Congress has not authorized conflicts in this wide array of contexts, and indeed many lawmakers — to say nothing of members of the public — would be surprised to learn that hostilities have taken place in many of these countries,” Ebright said. “Congressional authorization isn’t just a box-checking exercise: It’s a means of ensuring that the solemn decision to go to war is made democratically and accountably, with a clear purpose and goal that the American people can support.”
Despite the fact that the U.S. has not declared war since 1941, its military has fought near-constant wars from Korea to Vietnam from the 1950s through the 1970s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 21st century, as the executive branch has come to dominate the government and Congress has abdicated its constitutional duty to declare war. For years, the Pentagon has even attempted to define war out of existence, claiming that it does not treat 127e and similar authorities as authorizations for the use of military force. In practice, however, Special Operations forces have used these authorities to create and control proxy forces and sometimes engage in combat alongside them. Recent presidents have also consistently claimed broad rights to act in self-defense, not only of U.S. forces but also for partner forces. [...]
The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been stretched by successive administrations to cover a broad assortment of terrorist groups — most of which did not exist on September 11 — has been used to justify counterterrorism operations, including ground combat, airstrikes, and support of partner militaries, in at least 22 countries, according to a 2021 report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Under Trump, even this signature post-9/11 workaround for war has been eschewed for something more clandestine. Top Pentagon leadership wanted to keep so-called “advise, assist and accompany” or “AAA” missions — which can be indistinguishable from combat — under wraps during Trump’s first term. This led then-Defense Secretary James Mattis to order U.S. operations in Africa to be kept “off the front page,” a former senior U.S. official told the International Crisis Group. But the bid to keep Trump’s other African wars secret imploded during a May 2017 AAA mission when Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other Americans were wounded in a raid on an al-Shabab camp in Somalia. [...]
“During the global war on terror, the Department of Defense built out its capacity, and secured legal authorities, to operate ‘by, with, and through’ foreign militaries and paramilitaries,” Ebright said, noting that these authorities had been designed for countering al-Qaeda but had led to led to combat against groups that had not been debated and approved by Congress. “These smaller-scale, unauthorized hostilities through or alongside foreign partners may seem quaint compared to the Iran War and other recent public and persistent hostilities, but for years they deepened the perception that the president may use force whenever and wherever he pleases, even without specific congressional authorization.” [...]
“The proliferation of unauthorized, presidentially initiated conflicts raises profound challenges for our rule of law, democracy, and accountability around matters of war and peace,” said Ebright. “This is true, too, of secret wars that government officials may refer to as ‘light-footprint warfare’ or ‘low-intensity conflict,’ not the least because we’ve repeatedly seen intermittent strikes or raids give way to protracted military engagements and larger-scale operations.”
Bradley — perhaps best known for ordering the double-tap strike that killed two shipwrecked men last fall — recently offered a murky catalogue of “state adversaries, terrorists, and transnational criminal networks” aligned against the United States, including China, Russia, “Iran, its proxy forces, and terrorist organizations,” and other unnamed “state adversaries”; transnational criminal organizations that “continue to attempt to exploit the southern approaches to the United States”; ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates; as well as “terrorists” and “extremist groups” in Africa. The State Department currently counts 94 foreign terrorist organizations around the world, including 13 that were designated back in 1997. Thirty-seven groups, about 40 percent of the list, were added under Trump — 27 during his second term. The most recent addition, the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, was designated earlier this month. The administration also maintains a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations which it will not disclose.
For weeks, The Intercept has asked if the White House even knows how many wars, conflicts, kinetic operations, and military interventions the U.S. is currently involved in. We have never received a response. Read more - Lire plus
“It Seems Like Blind American Ignorance”: The New U.S. War on Iraq
| | Israel’s War on Lebanon Is a Consequence of “No Accountability” for Gaza: Human Rights Watch | |
DemocracyNow! 09/04/2026 - We go to Lebanon, where an Israeli invasion is in full swing along the southern border. Israel has announced the expansion of its so-called buffer zone and issued mass evacuation orders as its military destroys homes and infrastructure throughout the region. A humanitarian crisis is brewing as hospitals have been blocked from receiving medical supplies and as healthcare workers, as well as other civilians, have been killed in targeted Israeli strikes.
“This is a war again that’s been ongoing since October 2023, and over the past two-and-a-half years we’ve documented repeated, apparently deliberate, attacks on civilians,” says Human Right Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss, speaking from Beirut. “But what’s different this time around is that there’s a new brazenness in the statements issued by the Israeli military, where they are simply stating that they intend to commit more war crimes … perhaps a reflection of the state of impunity for any violations that have been committed in Lebanon, as in Gaza.” Read more - Lire plus
“10 Minutes of Terror”: Lebanon Death Toll Tops 300 from Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Attack
The BDS movement calls for intensifying isolation of genocidal Israel in response to its latest horrific massacre against the people of Lebanon
| | Jordan Liz: Trump’s Phoney War on Narcoterrorism | |
Progressive.org 30/03/2026 - On March 7, President Donald Trump hosted the inaugural “Shield of the Americas” summit, bringing together leaders from across the Caribbean and Latin America. The summit’s purpose was to announce the formation of a new international coalition committed “to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks once and for all.”
This is not a new initiative for the Trump Administration. Between early September and March 26, it launched forty-seven airstrikes targeting alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of at least 163 civilians. Yet, despite this declared war on narcoterrorism, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was found guilty in 2024 of taking bribes and allowing drug traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
None of Trump’s crusade against narcoterrorism is actually about drugs, crime, or terrorism. Like President Richard Nixon’s infamous “War on Drugs,” Trump’s real targets are his political opponents. As John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide, explained it in a 1994 interview:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Trump is using the same playbook. Consider Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro was a longstanding Trump critic. In 2019, he referred to Trump’s government as a “gang of extremists” that he hoped would be “defeated by powerful world-wide public opinion.” In 2025, Trump claimed that Maduro was the leader of the “Cartel de los Soles,” an alleged drug trafficking association in Venezuela. This was a strategic choice. Like antifa, Cartel de los Soles is not a formal organization with a clearly defined leadership structure. Rather, experts describe it as a loose network of individuals broadly involved in the drug trade.
Despite this, as with antifa, the Trump Administration designated the fictional cartel as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic—all Shield members—followed suit, as did Peru, a non-Shield member. That designation gave Trump the pretext to invade Venezuela, kidnap Maduro, and put him on trial for his alleged narco-crimes. Now that he’s in custody, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped the claim that the Cartel de los Soles is an actual organization.
Maduro was just the beginning. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel is likely Trump’s next target. Officials from the Trump Administration consider him “an obstacle” to the reforms they wish to see on the island. On January 29, in what could be a prelude to U.S. military intervention, Trump designated Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” because of its relationship with “transnational terrorist groups” and other hostile entities. His administration’s oil embargo is currently pushing Cuba to the brink of economic collapse. All of this has one goal: to make Cuba submissive to American interests, which is also his goal in Iran.
Trump is actively exploiting fears about terrorism and drugs to forcibly remove his political enemies. What he wants is to make Latin America (and the rest of the world) more pliable to his ambitions. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot become the shields behind which Trump hides his imperial violence. We cannot allow legitimate concerns about drug trafficking to be sabotaged by a con man who has repeatedly proven himself to be an unreliable and destabilizing ally. We must become, instead, shields that repel his attacks, protect the innocent, and defend our homes from the militarized terrorism of the Trump Administration. Source
“Illegal Blockade must End,” Said U.S. Congressional Members after Visit to Cuba
| |
U.S. Pushes Allies to Chase a New Terrorism Target: The Far Left | The Trump administration aims to deploy counterterrorism tools against far-left groups, even as it has offered little evidence they present a dire threat. | |
The New York Times 09/04/2026 - When senior Western officials met in Ottawa last month to discuss potential terrorism threats in light of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, a top State Department counterterrorism official delivered an unexpected message.
The United States was as concerned as always about Islamist terrorism, said the official, Monica A. Jacobsen, according to a copy of her prepared remarks reviewed by The New York Times and three officials briefed on the meeting. But, she told her counterparts from Europe, Canada and Australia, the Trump administration also wanted more attention on what it believed was an insidious, underestimated threat: the far left.
Western governments must combat “antifa and far-left terrorism,” Ms. Jacobsen’s prepared remarks asserted, casting the effort as an evolution in counterterrorism following the “global war on terror.” Her prepared speech defined far-left terrorism to include threats from communists, Marxists, anarchists, anticapitalists and those with “eco-extremist” and “other self-identified antifascist ideologies.”
“It is important to recognize their actions as political terrorism rather than mere protest or criminality,” said her prepared remarks, though it was unclear if she delivered them exactly as written. As evidence, the speech pointed to left-wing protesters who had recently clashed with the police in Italy.
Ms. Jacobsen’s appeals were part of a sweeping new effort by the White House to press foreign governments and embassies abroad to join its fight against what it calls far-left terrorists. The Trump administration is deploying its global counterterrorism machine against far-left movements like antifa — shorthand for “antifascist” — despite offering little evidence they present a dire threat to U.S. citizens.
This article is based on internal State Department documents and interviews with current and former U.S. officials, as well as officials in foreign governments that were asked to aid the effort, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues and closed meetings. [...]
In an effort to attract support, the State Department is seeking to host a May workshop for foreign law-enforcement officials in The Hague to teach them about the dangers of far-left groups and how to counter them, according to an internal State Department document, a current official and a former official.
Planned invitees include officials from Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India and Indonesia, according to the document. So far, U.S. officials have received less interest than they had hoped for, the two officials said. The State Department is also planning a summit on the topic in Washington in July for foreign government officials.
The proposed gatherings resemble an earlier program known as the Counterterrorism Law Enforcement Forum, which brought together international investigators largely to discuss the threat of right-wing extremists, said Ian Moss, a State Department counterterrorism official under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Trump administration shut down that program, but now appears to be trying to revive it and aim it at the far left, but without much justification, he said.
The administration has also largely halted a Department of Homeland Security initiative to map networks of far-right groups, according to a former department official. At the same time, the administration has sought to strengthen ties with right-wing groups overseas and to bolster their standing in their own countries. Read more - Lire plus
‘People should be scared’: convictions in US ‘antifa’ trial set dangerous precedent
FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database
| | Exclusive: FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center | | |
Ken Klippenstein 05/04/2026 - President Trump's budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.
The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September.
Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.
Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:
- “anti-Americanism,”
- “anti-capitalism,”
- “anti-Christianity,”
- “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”
- “extremism on migration,”
- extremism on “race,”
- extremism on “gender,”
- “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”
- Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and
- Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”
In other words, if your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI. The new center combats these supposed threats “by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis,” the budget request says.
Its creation appears to be inspired by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — an event that reportedly precipitated the formulation of NSPM-7 in the first place — according to the budget request, which alludes to “heinous assassinations” having “dramatically increased.”
The budget request also singles out social media as some kind of breeding ground for domestic terrorism, saying:
“Domestic terrorists exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications. They use these platforms to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence.”
Good thing millions of law-abiding Americans don’t use those!
In his testimony to Congress, FBI Director Kash Patel said that he would investigate every single person on the Discord channels used by accused killer Tyler Robinson. But leaked screenshots of those same Discord chats that I obtained, as well as interviews I conducted with its participants, made clear that these chats were about gaming, not politics.
This was far from Patel’s only overreach. Shortly after Kirk’s death, he announced the Bureau was investigating “the possibility of accomplices,” vowing to run down all “theories and questions” about outside involvement — including a possible foreign nexus.
Patel would later conclude that there was no evidence for any of it, but by then, baseless theories about an Israeli government role in Kirk’s death had proliferated across social media. Joe Kent, Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director until his resignation last month, reportedly tried to investigate these claims while in government, and has since echoed them publicly.
Maybe these guys should’ve taken their own advice about the perils of social media.
It’s hard to overstate how much the FBI is focusing of domestic terrorism under Patel and the Trump administration. Yet the media have barely covered NSPM-7, let alone the FBI shift. Shortly after Kirk’s death, FBI Director Kash Patel testified to Congress that he was overseeing a 300 percent increase in domestic terrorism investigations.
And in the first months of the administration, the FBI replaced the 9/11-inspired Terrorist Screening Center with the “Threat Screening Center.” As I reported at the time, the new mission broadened the scope to include “all national security threats,” which ostensibly was expanded to accommodate increased focus on transnational criminal organizations. Now the threat screening center oversees multiple terrorist watchlists that separate international terrorists, transnational criminals, and purely domestic “threats.” Then there’s the fact that the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is growing, as I reported last year. Source
Internal emails show the FBI is instructing state and local police on how to enforce the president’s crackdown on left-wing dissent
| | Not just ICE: Do we need DHS? | |
Salon 02/04/2026 - Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told Salon in an interview that she believed there was a danger in focusing too much on the structure of what’s happening at DHS and not enough on the rules that bind its agencies, in particular, its counterterrorism programs, such as the office of Counterterrorism and Homeland Threats. She described DHS as a sprawling agency with multiple missions under one banner.
“Many of those missions are kind of broad and ill-defined, if you will. And what it doesn’t have is a lot of very clear-cut rules and safeguards to prevent abuse,” Patel said. “It actually does have a lot of oversight mechanisms built in, but they haven’t functioned particularly well, and they haven’t been able to meaningfully constrain law enforcement abuses over the course of the department’s history, but particularly so now, and the administration has pretty easily discarded them.”
Patel said that over the past 24 years, since DHS’s founding, its counterterrorism mission has been eclipsed by immigration enforcement and emergency response duties, in large part due to a lack of real terror threats against the United States. There are also valid questions, Patel said, about what the department’s countererror offices are even accomplishing.
“When you look at DHS counterterrorism functions, particularly, they are quite limited. You have an Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which collects primarily publicly available information. That has always been a problematic office, because it has very often spent its time looking at domestic political movements as part of the counterterrorism mission. And you saw this back in 2020, when Portland happened, because it, along with other parts of DHS, was involved in, like, creating these dossiers and protesters and the like,” Patel said, referencing an infamous incident from 2020 when the office was caught spying on Oregon protesters.
The second fundamental problem with DHS’s counterterror functions is that its information has often been unreliable, according to Patel. She pointed to an example, again from 2020, involving DHS fusion centers, which are a network of 80 offices that collect and distribute information from and to law enforcement, first responders and some private sector entities. The incident Patel referenced had to do with false claims that protesters were piling up bricks to prepare for an attack or damage property during protests. The department circulated some of these claims through fusion centers, despite the lack of evidence. Patel said that this sort of information coming out of DHS only feeds into the problems the country has with police brutality and police response to protests.
“They’ll put out these bulletins that are based on some random social media posts, and then create this kind of very threatening environment, which obviously would have consequences for how law enforcement on the ground would respond and from the fusion center side as well. There’s definitely been a huge flood of unverified, not high quality information coming into DHS,” Patel said. “Whether or not that system actually provides any counterterrorism benefit, I think, is really, really questionable.” Read more - Lire plus
DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree
| | 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!
| | |
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/Iraq 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. | | 23 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat! | | 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 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.
| | 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!
| | | | |
