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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
February 14, 2025 - 14 février 2025
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Joint Letter on the UK Government’s use of Investigatory Powers Act to attack End-to-End Encryption | ICLMG joins 148 civil society organizations, companies, and cybersecurity experts, to call on the UK Home Office to rescind its demand that Apple create a backdoor into its end-to-end encrypted services. The letter, published and sent to the Home Secretary on 13 February, remains open to sign-ons until 20 February. If you are a cybersecurity expert or work at an organization or company that would like to sign on to this open letter, please fill out this sign-on form. | |
GEC 13/02/2025 - To The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP,
The undersigned civil society organizations, companies, and cybersecurity experts, including members of the Global Encryption Coalition, call on the UK Home Office to rescind its demand that Apple create a backdoor into its end-to-end encrypted services. This demand jeopardizes the security and privacy of millions, undermines the UK tech sector, and sets a dangerous precedent for global cybersecurity.
Reports indicate that the UK Government has issued a technical capability notice (or TCN) to Apple under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 s.253 (IP Act). If all had gone according to plan, the UK government would have forced Apple to build a backdoor into its end-to-end encrypted cloud services. The world’s second-largest provider of mobile devices would be built on top of a systemic security flaw, putting all of its users’ security and privacy at risk, not just in the UK but globally.
The consensus among cybersecurity experts could not be clearer: there is no way to provide government access to end-to-end encrypted data without breaking end-to-end encryption, thus putting every user’s security and privacy at risk.
Strong encryption keeps information and communication confidential. In a digital society, encryption is critical to safeguarding citizens both online and off, to protecting the digital economy, and to ensuring national security. In late January, the UK’s National Audit Office released a report that the “cyber threat to the UK government is severe.” As Ciaran Martin, former Director and founder of the UK Government’s National Cybersecurity Center notes “E2EE [end-to-end encryption] must expand, legally unfettered, for the betterment of our digital homeland.” With cyberattacks becoming ever-more frequent and sophisticated, the reliance of the UK government, citizens, and businesses on end-to-end encryption to keep themselves safe and secure has never been greater. [...]
Similarly, encrypted communications protect the UK’s national security. Government services benefit from encryption and providing backdoors in one instance can lead to encryption being weakened across the ecosystem of the public sector, as well. For national security professionals and government employees, access to end-to-end encrypted services allows them to safeguard their personal life. Ensuring the security and privacy of government officials is vital for helping prevent extortion or coercion attempts, which could lead to greater national security damage.
To ensure the national and economic security of the United Kingdom, the Home Office must end its technical capability notice forcing Apple to break its end-to-end encryption. Read more - Lire plus
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Carleton University Fails to Counter Smears Against Hassan Diab | |
ICLMG 11/02/2025 - In early December 2024, the ICLMG coalition wrote to Carleton University interim president Dr. Jerry Tomberlin, in response to a smear campaign calling on Dr. Hassan Diab to be fired from the university. In our letter, we asked the university to issue a statement in support of Dr. Diab’s innocence, take measures to protect him and his family from harassment, and ensure his continued employment at Carleton University.
The university failed to reply. In the meantime, the National Post ran an article, in early January 2025, about the fact that Dr. Diab would not be teaching at Carleton University for the Winter 2025 semester. The article repeated the allegations of the smear campaign against Dr. Diab, with proponents claiming victory that Dr. Diab would not be teaching. In the article, the university failed once again to defend Dr. Diab, and in an ambiguous response, stated only that he was “not in the employment of Carleton.”
This is despite the university knowing full well, as has been shared by Dr. Diab himself, that he was not scheduled to teach at the university in the Winter Semester in a decision made long before the smear campaign began.
In response to the university’s clear failure to share all relevant facts, or to defend a member of its faculty against harassment and attacks, we sent a follow-up letter on January 22nd, 2025, to Carleton University President Dr. Wisdom Tettey. In it, we once again provided clear information on the miscarriage of justice faced by Dr. Diab, and called on the University to, “take action to correct the record regarding both Dr. Diab’s innocence, the conditions under which he parted ways with Carleton University, and that he will be given fair consideration for re-employment at Carleton University, should the case arise.”
The university’s response to our follow-up, from Deputy Provost Dr. Catherine Khordoc, failed once again to address our concerns, simply repeating that Dr. Diab is not in the employment of Carleton University, and that they could not discuss the issue further due to privacy concerns. This deflection ignores that our request was not to discuss private information related to Dr. Diab, but for the university to set the record straight and commit to doing better in the future.
In our response, we write:
“It is incredibly disappointing that a public institution like Carleton University has not taken a more clear and proactive stance in defending a faculty member who has lived through a horrendous ordeal for nearly 20 years now. Through our coalition’s work on the impacts of false and misleading accusations of participation in acts of terrorism, we have seen how these kinds of baseless allegations can completely undermine an individual’s livelihood, as well as their most basic rights. As noted in our letter, there is ample evidence demonstrating not only that the case against Dr. Diab was fundamentally flawed and would not have succeeded except for France’s exceptional laws regarding counterterrorism cases, but there is also clear evidence that he was not in France at the moment of the attack. Hassan Diab is clearly innocent, so Carleton University should act accordingly – especially given how he was treated by Carleton University administration when he was first arrested in 2008.”
We remain open to further discussions with Carleton University administration, and committed to ensuring that the nearly 20-year ordeal faced by Dr. Diab comes to an end. Source
Please take action and share widely:
1. Send a letter urging Canada to act to help achieve justice for Hassan Diab
2. Tell Carleton University: Stand up for Dr. Hassan Diab and Protect him from Harassment and Threats. Thank you!
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Janet Dench: Upholding the Rights of Asylum Seekers
| We launched our 20th anniversary publication "Defending Civil Liberties in an Age of Counter-terrorism and National Security" on Sept 11, 2024. You can read the full PDF or get a physical copy here. Over the next few months, we will be sharing two texts from the publication per News Digest to make sure they all get the attention they deserve. | |
ICLMG 2024 - The US-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement is about the same age as the ICLMG and has similar roots. In December 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the governments of the US and Canada signed a Smart Border Declaration and Associated 30‑Point Action Plan to Enhance the Security of Our Shared Border While Facilitating the Legitimate Flow of People and Goods. One of the action points was the Safe Third Country Agreement, designed to prevent most people from making a refugee claim at the US-Canada land border. People seeking protection from persecution and making a refugee claim were presented as a threat to security and were not considered to be a “legitimate flow of people”.
The Safe Third Country Agreement is based on the principle that refugees should make their claim in whichever of the two countries they first arrive, because both countries are supposedly safe for refugees. Although the agreement works equally in both directions, in effect it is overwhelming about stopping people who are in the US from seeking protection in Canada.
The Canadian Council for Refugees, along with many other refugee rights organizations, and with the support of the ICLMG, has consistently argued that the US is not in fact safe for all refugees. Widespread use of detention, in horrific conditions, violates human rights and makes it extremely difficult for people to advance a refugee claim – they often can’t find a lawyer and struggle with basic communication issues when trying to collect evidence to document their fears of persecution. US law requires people to make a refugee claim within a year of arrival in the country – many people don’t immediately know how to make a claim or even that it might be relevant to do so in their situation. Women fleeing gender-based persecution frequently find the refugee door closed to them in the US – although the rules have changed several times over the last two decades, at no point has there been consistent and adequate protection for women because of how narrowly the US interprets the definition of refugee.
For all these reasons, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International Canada and The Canadian Council of Churches launched a legal challenge of the Safe Third Country Agreement in 2005. The Federal Court upheld the challenge in 2007, but the decision was overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the appeal.
When the Trump Administration came into power and immediately introduced shocking measures such as the “Muslim ban”, many hoped that the Canadian government, which prided itself on welcoming refugees, would finally be forced to conclude that the US could no longer be considered safe for refugees. But, as we later found out through disclosures in litigation, the Canadian government had established no minimum standards below which the government would need to withdraw from the agreement. So the government continued with the fiction that the US was safe for refugees.
The three same organizations therefore initiated another legal challenge in 2017, along with a courageous Salvadoran woman and her children (other individuals later joined their case). This case followed very much the same path as the first time around: the Federal Court upheld our challenge (finding that the conditions in detention in the US violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and then once again the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the decision.
The second time around, however, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case! Thousands of pages of evidence and argument are now before the Court, which held its hearing in October 2022. As I write, we are awaiting the decision.
Meanwhile, in 2022, over 30,000 people crossed into Quebec at Roxham Road – not an official border point. They were arrested and processed. They did not want to cross irregularly – but this used to provide a way they could pursue a refugee claim in Canada, because the Safe Third Country Agreement did not apply in between Ports of Entry – until just recently!
In March 2023, Canada and the US extended the Safe Third Country Agreement to apply between Ports of Entry as well. This will not stop irregular crossings – it will simply make them more irregular, dangerous, and underground. We can expect to see an increased number of people hurt or even dying as they attempt risky routes across the border, including in deep winter. Unscrupulous smugglers will take advantage of the opportunity to make money out of people’s desperation.
The fact that the revised agreement requires people not to make a refugee claim within 14 days of entering Canada means that people may be under the control of smugglers for two weeks, vulnerable to abuse, and knowing that if they flee the smugglers they will lose the opportunity to make a refugee claim.
Far from enhancing border security, the agreement makes everyone less secure – it promotes irregular crossing of the border and subjects people seeking safety to much greater risks. The agreement needs to die. Source
Janet Dench was Executive Director of the Canadian Council for Refugees until December 2022.
Version française : Défendre les droits des demandeur.ses d’asile
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Tim McSorley: A Victory for Citizenship Equality!
| Le 11 septembre 2024, nous avons lancé notre publication 20e anniversaire « Défendre les libertés civiles à l’ère de la sécurité nationale et de la guerre au terrorisme ». Vous pouvez lire le PDF complet ou obtenir une copie papier ici. Au cours des prochains mois, nous partagerons deux textes de la publication dans chaque Revue de l'actualité pour nous assurer qu'ils reçoivent tous l'attention qu'ils méritent. | |
ICLMG 2024 - The ICLMG was among the first to denounce the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (adopted in June 2014, formerly Bill C-24) as unconstitutional and anti-Canadian for discriminating against dual nationals by allowing the removal of citizenship for national security reasons. This law effectively created a two-tiered citizenship regime that discriminated against dual nationals, whether born abroad or in Canada, and naturalized citizens. These Canadians had more limited citizenship rights compared to other Canadians, simply because they or their parents or ancestors were born in another country. ICLMG supported a legal challenge against the law, writing:
The ICLMG opposed Bill C-24 since it was tabled in Parliament. The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act is a step backward for our democracy and rule of law principle. With this new Citizenship Act, Canadians are divided into two classes: those who will keep their Canadian citizenship no matter what and those who can be stripped of their Canadian citizenship if some federal bureaucrats decide so. Thus, if you are born in Canada but you have parents or ancestors from another country, your Canadian citizenship is worth less. It can be revoked not by the court but by the government and this is unacceptable by any democratic standards.
An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act (formerly Bill C-6) was adopted in June 2017 and removed the grounds for the revocation of Canadian citizenship that relate to national security, effectively killing that two-tier citizenship regime. Source
Tim McSorley is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
Version française : Une victoire pour l’égalité en matière de citoyenneté!
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Abdelrazik's lawyer cites 'serial hypocrisies' in final detention case arguments | |
The Canadian Press 29/01/2025 - A lawyer for Abousfian Abdelrazik accused the federal government of "serial hypocrisies" as closing arguments began on his client's lawsuit over his prolonged detention in Sudan. Lawyer Paul Champ argued during a Federal Court hearing Wednesday that federal officials contributed to the grave breaches of fundamental human rights that Abdelrazik suffered over a period of six years.
The Sudanese-born Abdelrazik settled in Montreal as a refugee and became a Canadian citizen in 1995. During a 2003 visit to his native country to see his ailing mother, he was arrested, imprisoned and questioned about suspected extremist connections. Abdelrazik, who denies involvement in terrorism, says he was tortured by Sudanese officials during two intervals of detention. He is suing the Canadian government, claiming federal officials encouraged his detention by Sudanese authorities and actively obstructed his repatriation to Canada for several years.
"The Crown's real goal throughout was to prevent him from returning to Montreal and exercising his constitutional right to enter Canada, to return to his country of citizenship," Champ said. The suit also names Lawrence Cannon, Conservative foreign affairs minister from October 2008 to May 2011. Abdelrazik's action was filed in 2009 but delays meant the civil trial began only last year. Federal lawyers contend Canada neither caused nor contributed to any mistreatment Abdelrazik may have experienced.
On Wednesday, Champ walked the court through evidence and submissions presented during hearings last fall.
He said Abdelrazik was arbitrarily detained for nearly three years, spending time in some of the worst prisons in Khartoum. "While in prison, he was beaten with rubber hoses, slapped, kicked, subject to cold and hot temperatures, shackled, burned and forced into stress positions for many days," Champ said. "He also spent periods in solitary confinement." Upon release, he added, Abdelrazik "was still prevented from returning to Canada, suffering exile and separation from his home and his young children in Montreal for another three years."
Canadian officials were instrumental in Abdelrazik's ongoing detention in Sudan, Champ said. "What mattered to them was that he not return to Canada," he said. Champ said Canadian officials knew, or ought to have known, that Abdelrazik was at risk while in the custody of Sudanese intelligence, which he called "a fearsome agency well-known for brutality and systematic torture."
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency worked with a country with a weak rule of law and little respect for human rights in order to "neutralize or disrupt this Canadian citizen by simply keeping him far from North America," Champ told the court.
When Abdelrazik's arbitrary detention and imprisonment was no longer tenable, even for the Sudanese, Canada "contributed to or acquiesced in his placement" on no-fly lists that further frustrated his right to return to Canada, Champ added. The federal government's "serial hypocrisies" culminated in Cannon's decision in 2009 to deny Abdelrazik an emergency passport, he said. Read more - Lire plus
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As Trump’s anti-migrant push gains steam, advocates urge Canada to act | Rights advocates say Canada, by upholding deal curbing asylum at US border, is ‘complicit’ in Trump’s migrant crackdown. | |
Al Jazeera 07/02/2025 - Donald Trump has been in the White House for less than three weeks, but the United States president has already launched what many say is a concerted attack on the rights of migrants and refugees.
The Republican leader has sent migrants to the notorious detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; pushed for more deportations; effectively banned asylum; and suspended the refugee resettlement programme.
Trump has also used the threat of tariffs to pressure his country’s neighbours — Canada and Mexico — to enact harsher measures at their respective borders to stem irregular migration into the US.
For Canadian rights advocates, the Trump administration’s anti-migrant policies are cause for alarm, and they have called on Canada to stop sending most asylum seekers who arrive at the Canadian border in search of protection back to the US.
“The United States government itself is becoming an agent of persecution of people within its borders,” said Wendy Ayotte, co-founder of Bridges Not Borders, a group that supports refugees and asylum seekers on the Quebec-New York border. “When we return people to the United States as we are currently doing, … that makes us complicit with an anti-refugee regime,” Ayotte, who lives in the small Quebec town of Havelock, told Al Jazeera.
“It makes us complicit with the possibility this person will either languish in detention in poor condition or be sent back to their home country.” [...]
The Canadian government had already announced a plan to boost border security late last year, shortly after Trump first threatened to impose the tariffs. That $910m (1.3bn-Canadian-dollar) scheme included investments in drones, helicopters and other surveillance equipment.
Migration at the Canada-US border also is already subject to stringent rules. In 2023, the two countries expanded what’s known as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). Under the pact, which first entered into force in 2024, asylum seekers must seek protection in whichever of the two countries they arrive in first. That means someone who is already in the US cannot make an asylum claim in Canada unless they meet specific exemptions.
The agreement previously only applied to asylum claims at official ports of entry, meaning that people who crossed into Canada irregularly could have their claims heard once on Canadian soil. But in March 2023, Trudeau and then-President Joe Biden expanded the STCA to the entirety of the border, including between ports of entry. That has made it even more difficult for people to access the Canadian asylum system. [...]
Rights advocates, however, said the agreement does not stop irregular migration but only pushes desperate asylum seekers to take riskier routes in their search for safety. Gauri Sreenivasan is co-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), a group involved in a legal challenge against the STCA. The organisation has argued for years that the US is not a safe place for those seeking asylum. “Certainly, the series of executive orders and the actions that we are now seeing President Trump make [have made] the US dangerously more unsafe for those seeking protections,” Sreenivasan told Al Jazeera. [...]
CCR, Amnesty International Canada and the Canadian Council of Churches have challenged the STCA on the basis that it violates the rights to life, liberty and security as well as the right to equal protection as enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the right to life argument in 2023, saying that while asylum seekers faced possible rights violations in the US, the STCA contained sufficient safety mechanisms to exempt people who might be at risk if sent back.
But the justices sent the case back to a lower federal court to rule on the equal protection argument. A hearing is expected this year, but no date has been set, Sreenivasan said. She added that Canada does not need to wait for the courts to rule on the STCA, though. “They should be able to assess what is happening right now under the series of [Trump] executive orders,” Sreenivasan said, “and clearly identify that conditions are no longer safe, that there is no effective right to asylum in the US.” [...]
Back in Canada, Ayotte at Bridges Not Borders said migration has been used as a “political football” by lawmakers north of the border, too – and that is unlikely to change before federal elections this year. Yet she said politicians and Canadian voters alike face a critical moment. “As Canadians we have to ask ourselves, do we want to be compliant with this? Just how far are we willing to go to comply … [with] a bully and a racist who has no concern for human life?” she said, referring to Trump. “I think we have to look ourselves in the face and ask ourselves, ‘What do we stand for?'” Read more - Lire plus
The hidden truth about migrant deaths at the Canada-U.S. border: Agencies seem to not track deaths along the border in either country
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Immigration lawyers accuse Ottawa of stalling on visa approvals for thousands of stranded Gazans | |
The Globe and Mail 07/02/2025 - Almost 5,000 Palestinians who applied last year to take part in a special Ottawa program to help them flee war-torn Gaza and join relatives in Canada have been deemed eligible by the government, but so far only 620 – or fewer than 15 per cent – have arrived.
Immigration lawyers representing Palestinians and their Canadian relatives are accusing the government of deliberately stalling applications, and are urging officials to take advantage of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and reopening of the Rafah crossing to press Israel to allow applicants still in Gaza to exit.
They say scores of Palestinians have paid thousands of dollars in bribes to cross into Egypt to complete biometric checks in Cairo required by the Canadian government and have been waiting for months there for final approval. Others are waiting in Gaza for confirmation that their visas have been approved.
Yameena Ansari, an immigration lawyer, said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada “is fully capable of expediting processing of applications. They do it regularly for many lines of business. So, if the Gaza applications are not being expedited, that is not an accident.”
Immigration lawyer Warda Shazadi Meighen of Landings LLP in Toronto said Canada must act swiftly to uphold its commitments under the Gazan program. “For those still seeking relocation – particularly individuals with family in Canada – this moment presents a crucial opportunity to fulfill our humanitarian obligations,” she said.
Matthew Behrens, who co-ordinates the Rural Refugee Rights Network, said “it is inexcusable” for IRCC to sit on applications for over a year, warning that “the border could be closed again at a moment’s notice.” Read more - Lire plus
NEW Trudeau must condemn Trump’s insane Gaza plan
NEW Ottawa rally: Stand against Trump's ethnic cleansing - Sat Feb 15 at 2pm
ACTION Family Reunification February Call to Action: Canada Must Urgently Complete all Gaza Applications and Open the Borders During Ceasefire
Concordia bars student union from booking spaces following vote on Palestinian solidarity
NEW Send an email to Minister Joly and Minister Blair to demand an Arms Embargo Now!
UK Government 'covers for Israeli crimes to continue arms exports'
Deaths from Israel’s attacks on Gaza close to 62,000 as missing added
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US proposal to ‘take over’ Gaza would shatter fundamental rules of international order, warn UN experts | |
UN OHCHR 11/02/2025 - 35 UN experts* today condemned shocking threats by US President Donald Trump to “take over” and “own” Gaza and move the Palestinian population elsewhere, using military force if necessary.
“Such blatant violations by a major power would break the global taboo on military aggression and embolden other predatory countries to seize foreign territories, with devastating consequences for peace and human rights globally,” they said.
“Implementing the US proposal would shatter the most fundamental rules of the international order and the United Nations Charter since 1945, that the US was instrumental in creating to restore peace after the catastrophic Second World War and Holocaust. It would return the world to the dark days of colonial conquest,” the experts said.
“It is manifestly illegal to invade and annex foreign territory by force, to forcibly deport its population, and to deprive the Palestinian people of their inalienable right to self-determination, including to retain Gaza within a sovereign Palestinian state,” they said.
“Such violations would replace the international rule of law and the stability it brings with the lawless “rule of the strongest.” International law aims to stop predatory countries from violently colonising foreign lands and subjugating their populations, which inevitably leads to gross human rights violations,” they said.
“Just as over half a century of Israeli occupation of Palestine has not brought peace or security to Israel or Palestine, US occupation would be similarly ruinous and fuel perpetual war, death and destruction,” they said.
The mass deportation of civilians from occupied territory was recognised as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 after the Second World War, to prevent the recurrence of acts such as Nazi Germany’s expulsion of populations from European countries. Today, it is also a crime against humanity.
“The US proposal would accelerate forced displacement of Palestinians from their lands, which began in the 1947-48 Nakba, and has since included home demolitions, evictions, destruction and theft of natural resources and the criminal building of illegal Israeli colonial settlements,” they said.
In his previous term, President Trump illegally recognised Israel’s unlawful annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which have been rejected by the International Court of Justice, the General Assembly, the Security Council and an overwhelming majority of countries.
“If the US President is genuinely concerned for the welfare of Palestinians, the US should broker a lasting ceasefire, resume funding to UNRWA, compensate Palestinians for damage resulting from US weapons and munitions supplied to Israel despite the serious risk of violations of humanitarian law, and end arms transfers. It should also pressure Israel to fund reconstruction and provide reparation for violations, pursue accountability for perpetrators of international crimes, and meaningfully support Palestinian statehood,” they said.
The experts also urged the United States to support the multilateral bodies that protect human rights in Palestine, including the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court, which advance US national interests in liberty and justice.
Israeli military attacks in Gaza have killed over 48,100 Palestinians and injured 110,000, the majority women and children. They left 85 per cent of the population, about 1.9 million people, homeless and deprived of adequate food, water and other essentials, damaged or destroyed most housing, agricultural and public infrastructure and devastated the environment.
“All countries who care about human rights and the international rule of law should resolutely oppose the US President’s illegal threats. The world must never again accept a lawless world dominated by brute force that endangers us all,” they warned. Source
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Columbia students just sued the university for attacks on pro-Palestine activism
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Trump the “Peacemaker” Ramps Up America’s Forever War in Somalia | |
The Intercept 04/02/2025 - President Donald Trump took office last month touting his commitment to ending wars. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker,” he announced in his recent inaugural address. For years, in fact, Trump has touted his antiwar credentials and boasted about ending “endless wars.”
On Saturday, Trump ramped up America’s longest-running war, carrying out a strike in Somalia that killed an unspecified number of people. “These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies,” Trump posted on social media. “The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”
Trump asserted that the airstrike killed a “Senior ISIS Attack Planner” that the Biden administration failed to strike, despite a yearslong military targeting effort. “The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’” Trump announced.
U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, noted that the strike was conducted “in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia” but a Somali government official, speaking to The Intercept on background because he was not authorized to talk with the press, said very little advance notice was given.
AFRICOM did not confirm Trump’s assertions that the attack involved a cave complex, that the “Senior ISIS Attack Planner” had been targeted for years, or that there was any indication that those struck were planning to harm Americans. “We do not have any additional information to provide,” AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan told The Intercept.
The Trump administration also refused to provide any additional clarification or comment. “We have nothing for you beyond POTUS’ truth & the DOD press release,” a White House spokesperson told The Intercept by email.
AFRICOM echoed Trump, stating that “no civilians were harmed” in the Saturday strike.
A 2023 investigation by The Intercept determined that an April 2018 drone attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time, AFRICOM announced it had killed “five terrorists” and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.” Read more - Lire plus
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Center for Constitutional Rights Challenges Trump Migrant Flights to Guantánamo, ICC Sanctions & More | |
Democracy Now! 11/02/2025 - We look at a victory for immigrant rights, after a federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. government from deporting three Venezuelan men to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the Trump administration has started to send thousands of immigrants for detention.
Our guest, Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, sought an emergency order to protect the three men, who had been held for about a year at the Otero detention center. The men say they left Venezuela to request asylum in the United States but were rejected. When they saw others from the detention center transferred to Guantánamo, they feared they could be next and asked the judge to preemptively block their transfer.
This all comes as the Trump administration recently withdrew temporary protected status for Venezuelans living in the United States. “We decided we had to move and prevent their transfer, their rendition, to the lawless space in Guantánamo,” says Azmy.
We also speak with Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Warren says that the United States is “facing a constitutional crisis on a range of issues, and it’s just not clear to any of us whether this administration will actually comply with the rule of law in any context.” Read more - Lire plus
US has held migrants at Guantánamo Bay before, but Trump’s approach is different
Groups Sue Trump Administration for Access to Immigrants Sent from U.S. to Guantánamo Bay
'He's Building a Concentration Camp': Fears Grow as Images Emerge of Offshore Prison at Gitmo
‘Not going to rule that out’: Kristi Noem on migrants staying indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay
ACLU raises alarm on migrants’ conditions at Guantánamo Bay
A human rights disaster’: immigrants sent into Guantánamo black hole despite no proof of crime
Guantánamo: Criminalization of Immigration
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Corey Saylor: What America’s Muslims can teach you about resisting political oppression
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Al Jazeera 13/02/2025 - President Donald Trump’s outcries against government overreach and abusive tactics are numerous. But will he instruct his administration not to repeat these power abuses? Trump’s spokesman, Alex Pfeiffer, has asserted that FBI Director nominee Kash Patel will “end the weaponisation of law enforcement” and “target crime”. I find this unlikely. Patel’s statements suggest that, rather than ending such practices, the Trump administration will only increase persecution and attacks, both criminal and civil, on those perceived as political opposition.
For those wondering how an administration that favours headline-grabbing over justice and lawfulness might deploy weaponised law enforcement, baseless investigations, and political retaliation against those with differing viewpoints, there is much to be learned from the experiences of America’s Muslims.
For us, it is the same old story.
After 9/11, a broad range of Muslim organisations based in the US were targeted by law enforcement under the pretext of combating terrorism. This campaign involved high-profile investigations, asset seizures, and public accusations. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff, in their 2009 report Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity, reported that “According to the 9/11 Commission staff, Treasury officials acknowledged that in the post-9/11 period, ‘some of the evidentiary foundations for the early designations were quite weak,’ and that the haste to designate charities after 9/11 ‘might [have] result[ed] in a high level of false designations’.” Many other groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the US, where I work, were similarly smeared. The consequences of these smears persist to this day.
Take CAIR, for example. If you are a Muslim in the US with political opinions, particularly on civil rights or issues affecting marginalised minorities, you have been subjected to government scrutiny. By 2011, then-Attorney General Eric Holder concluded that “the facts and the law” did not support any legal action against CAIR. The Bush administration had reached the same conclusion earlier. Undeterred by facts or law, however, internet warriors claimed the decision was due to political interference. US Attorney James Jacks, a key figure in one prosecution, later issued a statement addressing these allegations, saying, “The decision to indict or not indict a case is based upon an analysis of the evidence and the law. That’s what happened in this case.”
Still, the labels and rumours persist. Be prepared, as this is likely what you – alongside anyone publicly expressing a dissenting opinion or standing opposition to a government position – will face under Trump 2.0. Facts? Law? Not in this case. The same old story: Disinformation serving political agendas. It will make your allies hesitant to come to your defence. It will make donors nervous. It will obstruct your ability to advance charitable causes.
In the case of American Muslims, analysts have identified various motivations behind these attacks, many of which were unrelated to “public safety”.
Following 9/11, the US government was under intense pressure to prevent further attacks. Prosecuting or investigating Muslim organisations allowed officials to promote a narrative of actively combating domestic terrorism.
Anti-Muslim racism, rather than evidence of criminal activity, led to the perception that Muslim organisations were inherently suspicious. Recently, Elon Musk, billionaire X owner heading Trump’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, has used his social media platform to perpetuate a narrative of moustache-twisting Muslim villains.
Since 9/11, US government agencies have repeatedly been rewarded with increased funding and expanded authority for implementing counterterrorism programmes targeting Muslims, even when those programmes were based on stereotypes and unfounded science, and contributed nothing to public safety. The NYPD’s Muslim surveillance and mapping programmes resulted in zero prosecutions. The Obama Administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programmes produced dubious indicators, such as the idea that growing or shaving one’s beard could be a sign of malevolent intent. Meanwhile, concerns about the threat posed by ideological extremists such as white supremacists were downplayed.
In 2009, a report by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division warned of the rising threat from white supremacists and violent antigovernment groups. Congress torched it. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disavowed the report. The DHS analyst behind it left his job. His team was dissolved.
By 2011, journalist R Jeffrey Smith noted that “as many as 40 analysts” were focusing on al-Qaeda and its ideological allies. By contrast, in 2012, Wired journalist Spencer Ackerman reported that the DHS had only a single analyst tasked with tracking all forms of domestic non-Islamic extremism. In 2017, the Government Accountability Office reported that 62 of the 85 extremist terrorist incidents in the US post-9/11 were carried out by white nationalists.
Through this government overreach, America’s Muslims have learned a hard lesson: When those in power want to target you, there is little you can do to stop it. Ducking for cover or appeasing your oppressors are not viable strategies. However, there are steps you can take: Prioritise serving your community, develop resilience, refuse to change who you are to please those in power, enhance legal preparedness, and build your ability to communicate directly with the American people. It is a difficult road, but movements that champion justice will ultimately thank you. Source
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Spencer Ackerman: Elon Musk and The Security State's Uvalde Moment | |
Forever Wars 03/02/2025 - JOHN VOORHEES AND BRIAN MCGILL are the exceptions that prove a highly sobering rule.
Voorhees was the head of internal security for the U.S. Agency for International Development until Saturday. McGill was Voorhees' deputy. They're on administrative leave after attempting to prevent young minions of Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive and someone possessing zero Constitutional authority, from accessing personnel and security systems, "including classified systems" beyond their clearance level, per NBC News.
Voorhees and McGill did their jobs. In doing them, however, they exposed how few people within the vast, powerful and well-funded apparatus of "national security" are even trying to stop the acolytes of an unelected billionaire from rampaging through classified systems for nebulous purposes. And, to be clear, not only classified systems: They have seized the Treasury Department's payment systems, which threatens congressional government under Article 1; and see my friend Jessica Valenti's reporting on how they're deleting reproductive-health, LGBTQIA and domestic-violence data from the Centers for Disease Control and related government websites.
In many, many other contexts that we have seen, post-9/11, the Security State considers its classified systems so sacrosanct as to protect them at gunpoint. National Security Agency whistleblower Bill Binney was in the shower when the FBI raided his home and pointed a gun at his head. I am sure no one reading this newsletter needs a refresher on what happened to Chelsea Manning, or Daniel Hale, or Reality Winner, or Terry Albury: their whistleblowing was treated as espionage. That very recent history renders the complete inaction of the FBI in this high-stakes moment of Constitutional crisis not only conspicuous, but something like surrender.
This is the FBI's Uvalde moment. The danger to the Constitution is running amok inside government buildings. But the Security State stands outside, deterred, and will present any number of rationalizations about how this isn't their job. With retaliatory purges underway at the bureau, the FBI looks, much like the CIA, as though it simply doesn't want to risk blowback from defending the Constitutional order.
And not just them. With Trump promising to end what remains of the Justice Department's independence from the White House, what prosecutor is going to try to indict the Musk crowd for unauthorized access to classified information? Better to keep your head down and let Musk do what he's going to do than be a Voorhees or a McGill. And all of this is happening before Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are confirmed.
"We have a Constitutional crisis, period," says Tom Drake, another NSA whistleblower, one who was charged with five counts under the same Espionage Act that Elon Musk doesn't need to lose sleep over. "This is not reform, it is a coup cloaked in bureaucracy."
Drake, a former senior NSA executive who possesses one of the sharpest and fastest minds I have ever encountered, had his career and his finances destroyed over the exposure of post-9/11 warrantless surveillance. Fixated as I am on the discrepancy between how the FBI and its sister agencies treated him and how they're treating Musk’s cronies, I gave Drake a call.
"As I watch the unfolding crisis surrounding Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration's blatant disregard for Constitutional norms, I am haunted by echoes of my own past battles with an unaccountable state," Drake says. (I have to interject that there is no "Department of Government Efficiency," just Musk's agenda, people and operations under a deceitful name.) "What we are witnessing now is not just history repeating itself. It is an escalation into dangerous new territory."
Some of Drake's NSA whistleblower colleagues have gone over to MAGA territory. Not him. Drake, who has "lived through the crushing weight of government overreach," considers Trump not an overdue corrective for a corrupt system but a symptom and accelerant of its corruption. To him, the Constitutional order is "still worth fighting for," and that's coming from someone who fought for it against the post-9/11 NSA. Read more - Lire plus
Public Citizen, NWLC, More Than 110 Organizations Call for Investigation of Elon Musk’s Lawless Government Takeover
EFF Sues DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to Halt Ransacking of Federal Data
Civil Rights Community to Congress: STOP Trump Nominees, Leverage Budget until Musk-led Data Breach is Halted
Donald Trump’s directive of compiling a list of those who worked on January 6th cases has put the fear of a mass purge of America’s justice department and investigative department
U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test
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Surveillance Without Scrutiny: Trump’s PCLOB Purge Could Be Highly Consequential | |
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Tech policy.press 06/02/2025 - In his first days in office, President Trump has made dramatic moves to implement his agenda, from signing a stack of executive orders onstage just hours after being sworn in to telling ICE agents to be camera-ready for immigration raids that he’s eager to see covered on TV.
One clear theme of his efforts this week has been to draw a cloak of secrecy and impunity tightly around not just his administration but the entire federal government, seeking to guarantee that some of the most egregious abuses of power can happen safe from public view and insulated against challenge from watchdogs in the government.
Although his dismissals of inspectors general and DOJ attorneys who attempted to hold him to account for alleged crimes have garnered the lion’s share of coverage, his decision to fire all three Democratic commissioners of the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is also highly consequential.
PCLOB is an important-if-low-profile independent agency tasked with oversight of anti-terrorism matters too sensitive for public review. The agency was established in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and over the course of its existence, it has provided an important check on the kinds of secret government surveillance activities that are most difficult to police. Critically, crippling PCLOB could also torpedo the key trans-Atlantic trade and data-sharing arrangement because it is premised on the agency’s assurance of oversight.
The vital role of PCLOB was illustrated in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations, when officials from the National Security Agency insisted that its practice of mass collection of telephone call records was both legally valid and practically invaluable, claiming it had disrupted numerous terror attacks.
That kind of counterfactual is difficult to confirm. Still, the threat of potentially allowing deadly terror attacks should certainly give pause to any lawmaker seeking to reign in such a program.
Enter PCLOB. According to a report made public by the agency, which was able to get a view into the secret program denied to the public, not only did the program “lack a legal foundation,” but reviewers weren’t able to find evidence that it had stopped a single terror attack – let alone the numerous attacks claimed by officials.
This kind of oversight can’t be left to officials directly accountable to the President and his appointees. Nor can it be left to the media or NGOs, who will never have the access needed for a complete picture, which is why Congress created the agency in the first place.
PCLOB has faced criticism over the years (including from my own organization), but its unique position as an independent federal agency makes it a critical piece of any effort to preserve Americans’ rights and liberties in the national security space.
President Trump’s decision to gut the agency is disturbing on multiple levels. The first is obvious: what is the President planning to do with the vast secret powers of the national security apparatus that he doesn’t want the public to know about? Firing PCLOB’s members doesn’t necessarily mean he’s planning on mass surveillance of his enemies or the public at large – but gutting PCLOB opens the door to politically motivated surveillance under the guise of fighting terrorism.
Just as critically, this move, along with the firing of Inspectors General from across the government, sends a clear signal that independent watchdogs are not welcome. The message is obvious: if you choose to blow the whistle on illegal activities, even through protected channels created by federal statute, your job is on the line. That threat will deter the independent oversight that the PCLOB was meant to provide and enable the President to remove anyone who nonetheless dares to provide the public with information about government abuses.
For all the major news stories we can expect to see over the next four years (and if the last 10 days give any indication, that will be plenty), some of the most frightening will be the ones that never make it to air. If sunlight is the best disinfectant, as Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, President Trump is drawing the curtains of government tight – and we probably won’t know what’s festering until it’s too late. Source
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Noura Erakat: The Boomerang Comes Back | |
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Boston Review 05/02/2025 - In his searing 1950 polemic Discourse on Colonialism, Martinican writer Aimé Césaire wrote of the “boomerang effect,” whereby violence in the colonial periphery manifests itself in the colonial metropole. Hitler’s genocide of European Jews, he noted, was modeled after European rule over African and Asian colonies. (He may have had in mind the German extermination of the Nama and Herero people in Namibia during their period of colonial rule from 1884 and 1915—a period of brutality that scarcely registered in Europe while it was taking place.) Some seventy-five years later, Césaire’s point has been borne out many times over: there is no clear dividing line between a colonial power’s imperial geography and its metropole.
In the early twentieth century, when the U.S. army in the Philippines reoriented itself to address counterinsurgency and cement colonial rule over its newly conquered territories and peoples, law enforcement at home transformed itself in its image. Drawing on the new military model, police reformers revamped their departments to feature professional academies, mounted police units, surveillance, racial profiling, anticipatory policing, mapping, and weapons training. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam further militarized U.S. police, ushering SWAT teams, military-grade weapons, and a willingness to deploy disproportionate force into urban policing. At the turn of the century, the so-called War on Terror expanded presidential authority, severely curtailed civil rights, and made a mockery of the Constitution just as quickly as it did international law.
Today we are living out the latest chapter of this story, and this time the boomerang has come hurtling back with astonishing speed. Already, the genocide has expanded authoritarianism—its U.S. architects ignoring the 84 percent of Democrats who supported a ceasefire, censoring the media, and suppressing academic freedom—as well as increased police power, with snipers on university rooftops training their weapons at unarmed protesters a frequent occurrence.
This might have been a galvanizing moment. The entwinement between state and military violence could have made more vivid how Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian racism in the United States fuels endless war abroad, and how, in turn, this endless war continues to villainize Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. But for most, that moment of recognition has not come. Instead, abuse against Palestinians has been normalized, and harmful precedents have been established that make other vulnerable communities less safe as well.
Consider the repression that Palestinians and their allies have endured in the United States over the last year. Palestine Legal reports that in the five months after October 7, the organization received over 1,500 reports of harassment, abuse, doxing, and loss of employment—a seven-fold increase over the whole of 2020. The Council on American-Islamic Relations likewise reports that in the final quarter of 2023, it received a 178 percent increase in reports compared to the same period in 2022. And all this is to say nothing of outright violence against Palestinians, including the shooting of three Palestinian American college students in Burlington, Vermont, who were targeted for wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic (and which left twenty-year-old Brown University student Hisham Awartani paralyzed), and the killing of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was stabbed twenty-six times in his home by his seventy-one-year-old landlord.
While these crimes were not state sponsored, they are the direct fallout of the U.S. government’s complicity in ongoing genocide and its decades-old anti-terrorism laws, which, as Darryl Li has highlighted, have been constructed specifically to target Palestinians. From the first mention of terrorism in a federal statute in 1969 to the introduction of a government terrorism blacklist and the first immigration law to include terrorism as grounds for exclusion and deportation, all of these efforts historically targeted Palestinians and the Palestinian struggle for liberation more generally.
In 2001, the Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a humanitarian organization that built orphanages, distributed food, supported schools, and provided health care to Palestinians under Israeli rule, as well as in refugee camps. The administration charged its founders with working “on behalf of Hamas” under the Patriot Act, despite the fact that the recipients of the Foundation’s grants, such as municipal Zakat committees in Hebron, Tulkarm, and Nablus had also received U.S. government aid. During the spurious 2008 trial, an anonymous witness—who turned out to be an Israeli intelligence officer—used “secret evidence” on the stand for the first time in a U.S. criminal court, a clear violation of the Sixth Amendment. He knew the HLF had terror affiliations, he argued on the stand, because he could “smell Hamas” on them—which was enough to sentence the five cofounders of the Foundation to between fifteen and sixty-five years in prison.
Once established, however, these repressive measures have had impacts far beyond Palestinians. By March 2023, Georgia police had arrested and charged forty-two activists protesting the expansion of Cop City, a $90 million militarized police training facility that requires the clear-cutting of Atlanta’s largest clear space, charging them with domestic terrorism. Six months later, Georgia’s attorney general charged five of the activists with terrorism and three of the bail fund organizers with money laundering—expanding the list of targets to include those providing the protesters legal and financial support. And in May 2024, the state legislature in Tennessee adopted HB 2348/SB 2610, which allowed the state to target other social movements with terrorism charges—primarily environmental ones, as well as those who, like Black Lives Matter, declare their solidarity with Palestinians. Read more - Lire plus
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Craig Murray: UN Censures UK Abuse of Terrorism Act | |
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Consortium News 06/02/2025 - Four U.N. special rapporteurs have written jointly to the U.K. government demanding explanation of its inappropriate persecution of journalists and political activists under the Terrorism Act.
They state that those persecuted:
“appear to have no credible connection to ‘terrorist’ or ‘hostile’ activity.”
The cases taken up by the United Nations are those of Johanna Ross (Ganyukova), John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray (yes, me), Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst.
The U.N. letter is signed by:
—Ben Saul, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism;
—Irene Khan, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
—Gina Romero, special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association;
—Ana Brian Nougrères, special rapporteur on the right to privacy.
Under this U.N. special procedure, the letter is sent to the government in question which has 60 days to respond. This letter was sent by the U.N. to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government on Dec. 4. No reply having been received, it has now been published.
It is worth noting that even with the U.N. letter on its desk and ignored, Starmer’s government in fact stepped up the use of the Terrorism Act against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists in this period. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Tony Greenstein, among others, happened after the letter was drafted. [...]
The letter is in two parts. The first consists of an outline of the information received by the U.N. on each case and a request for a response from the British government. UN expert's concern over activist charges
Critique of Terrorism Laws
But the second part is a devastating critique of the U.K.’s terrorism laws and their inappropriate use to stifle dissent and freedom of expression. This legal analysis on lack of conformity with the U.K.’s human rights obligations is not dependent on any of the particular cases cited.
“While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, we express our concern regarding the potential misapplication of counter-terrorism laws against journalists and activists who were critical of the policies and practices of certain governments, which may unjustifiably interfere with the rights to freedom of expression and opinion and participation in public life, lead to self-censorship and have a serious chilling effect on the media, civil society and legitimate political and public discourse.
We are particularly concerned by the broad scope of section 12(1A) and schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 .…
We are concerned at the vagueness and overbreadth of the offence in section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which criminalizes expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation and being reckless as to whether it encouraged support for that organisation .…
The term ‘support’ is undefined in the Act and in our view is vague and overbroad and may unjustifiably criminalize legitimate expression.
… the meaning of expressing support for a proscribed organization is ambiguous and could capture speech that is neither necessary nor proportionate to criminalize, including legitimate debates about the de-proscription of an organization and disagreement with a government’s decision to proscribe ….
We note that there is no requirement that the expression of support relate to the commission of violent terrorist acts by the organization. As such, the offence may unjustifiably criminalize the expression of opinion or belief that is not rationally, proximately or causally related to actual terrorist violence or harms.
The offence further does not require any likelihood that the support will assist the organization in any way. It goes well beyond the accepted restrictions on freedom of expression under international law concerning the prohibition of incitement to violence or hate speech ….
We note that some proscribed organizations are de facto authorities performing a diversity of civilian functions, including governance, humanitarian and medical activities, and provision of social services, public utilities and education.
Expressing support for any of these ordinary civilian activities by the organization could constitute expressing support for it, no matter how remote such expression is from support for any violent terrorist acts by the group ….” Read more - Lire plus
UN expert's concern over activist charges
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Australia - Mandatory sentencing is not the answer
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LCA 06/02/2025 - The Law Council of Australia is extremely disappointed in the Government’s proposal to impose mandatory sentencing in response to certain hate crimes and a broad range of terrorism offences.
“The Law Council has been gravely concerned by the recent incidents and acts of antisemitism that have occurred across the country. At the same time, it is vitally important in challenging times to uphold rule of law principles and not adopt measures that risk serious injustice,” Law Council of Australia President, Juliana Warner said.
“The Government’s amendments to the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024 have introduced mandatory minimum sentences for certain hate crimes and terrorism offences. This would mean, for example, a person guilty of public display of prohibited symbols at a political protest would be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 12 months imprisonment.
“Under mandatory sentencing, the personal circumstances of the offender are not taken into consideration. This has the potential to disproportionately impact vulnerable groups.”
Other elements of the amendments would see minimum sentences of six years imposed in relation to a broad range of terrorism offences. This would include the offence of getting funds to, from or for a terrorist organisation. Financing terrorism offences would be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of three years.
“Mandatory sentencing laws are arbitrary and limit the individual’s right to a fair trial by preventing judges from imposing a just penalty based on the unique circumstances of each offence and offender,” Ms Warner said. “Judges are best placed to determine the appropriate and just penalty under these laws on an individual, case-by-case basis.
“The decision to add mandatory sentencing as part of the Government’s response to hate crimes has come late in the day without proper consideration. Further, the Australian Labor Party has gone against its 2023 National Platform that states Labor opposes mandatory sentencing. To our knowledge, no security or law enforcement agency has asked for these extraordinary measures. Source
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Philippines: Terrorism-Financing Charges Abused | |
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Human Rights Watch 11/02/2025 - Philippine authorities are filing baseless terrorism-financing charges against civil society groups and activists, apparently to be removed from the “grey list” of a global terrorism financing and money laundering watchdog, Human Rights Watch said today. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) visited the Philippines in January 2025 to determine whether the country can be removed from the organization’s list of countries subject to increased monitoring.
Philippine authorities have been exploiting the organization’s grey-listing to harass organizations and activists in a surge of terrorism financing cases. Many charges have been based on scant evidence that the courts have dismissed. The authorities appear to be increasing prosecutions so that the task force would remove the Philippines from its grey list, while disregarding its guidance that aims to protect nonprofit organizations. Being grey-listed could mean, among other impacts, difficulty in accessing international financial markets and reputational damage for the Philippines. Read more - Lire plus
Amnesty International: Philippines: End use of anti-terror laws to target development and human rights workers
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India: NGOs call on the EU to take action on urgent human rights concerns | |
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FIDH 13/02/2025 - Ahead of the College of Commissioners’ visit to India on 27 and 28 February 2025, FIDH and 11 other NGOs urge European Union (EU) leaders to step up their engagement with their Indian counterparts in light of the profound human rights crisis in the country.
Dear President von der Leyen,
Dear Commissioners,
EU SHOULD TAKE ACTION ON URGENT HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS IN INDIA
As the College of Commissioners prepares to visit India amid efforts to upgrade the strategic partnership between the European Union (EU) and India, our organizations urge EU leaders to step up their engagement with their Indian counterparts in light of the profound human rights crisis in the country.
India has witnessed a serious deterioration in human rights in the last decade. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has systematically weakened the country’s independent institutions that are essential to hold the executive accountable, and escalated its crackdown on peaceful dissent, press freedom, civil society and religious minorities. The Indian authorities have increasingly used federal laws to target their political opponents and civil society groups on allegations of financial irregularities. In multiple instances, authorities have used the country’s draconian anti-terrorism law against human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists, activists and academics. There has been a significant increase in hate speech by officials and ruling party leaders, incitement to violence against marginalized groups and attacks against religious minorities, even as the authorities have failed to take adequate action against those responsible.
The Indian authorities continue to repress human rights defenders, civil society and dissenting voices using a range of counterterrorism, foreign funding and anti-money laundering laws, including the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) and others. The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee called for the review and amendment of these laws following a recent evaluation of India in June 2024. Similarly, in June 2024, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – of which the European Commission and several EU states are members – recommended that India put in place measures to prevent the abuse of counterterrorism policies against non-governmental groups, following its mutual evaluation of India’s regimes to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.
Still, the Indian authorities continue to restrict non-profit organizations on vague and overly-broad grounds and cancel their licenses to receive foreign donations under the FCRA. The authorities also continue to arrest human rights defenders, journalists, students, and academics with impunity under the UAPA, India’s anti-terrorism law. Read more - Lire plus
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OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC | |
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!
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Uphold rights and liberties at protests and encampments across Canada! | |
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Please join us in calling for the following:
- Officials must stop equating Charter-protected expression and dissent with “support for terrorism,” and refrain from calling for law enforcement to forcibly end or prevent protest activities.
- Law enforcement agencies must refrain from acting against protesters exercising their Charter-protected rights, including at encampments.
- The Ontario legislature must immediately reverse the keffiyeh ban.
- Canada must call for a permanent ceasefire and to halt all arms sales, transfers and military aid to Israel.
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Canada: Remove the national security exemptions from Bill C-27! | |
Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, has been introduced by the federal government with the promise that it would enhance privacy protections, adequately regulate artificial intelligence (AI) and protect human rights. The bill, however, is not up to the task. Please join us in denouncing the dangerous national security related exemptions in the bill. | |
Canada: Do not purchase armed drones | |
The ICLMG is a member of the No Armed Drones campaign | |
In the government's proposal seeking bids for its drone program it laid out disturbing scenarios for Canadian military drone use: One scenario described drones being used to surveil activists protesting a (theoretical) G20 Summit in Quebec, helping the security team intercept and identify the occupants of a vehicle, who are “anti-capitalist radicals” intending to “hang a banner concerning global warming.” Another scenario modeled after US drone strike programs features a drone bombing “Fighting Age Males” in the Middle East after spotting one of them “holding a small radio or cell phone." The initial cost estimate is $5 billion with billions more to operate the drones over their 25-year lifespan. | |
CSIS isn't above the law! | |
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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 Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable, and for parliament to support Bill C-331, An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (duty of candour). Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.
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Canada must protect Hassan Diab! | |
Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now! | |
On January 20, 2023, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown ruled that Canada must repatriate Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria. On February 6, 2023, the Canadian government filed an appeal and asked that the Brown ruling be set aside and placed on hold while the appeal plays out. This is unacceptable.
Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts, including bombing by Turkey’s military. 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 & arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay.
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21 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now! | |
Canada must protect encryption! | |
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 Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!
Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir
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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 Prime Minister Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair calling for a ban now. | |
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Thanks to the support of our members and donors in the second half of 2024 we have been able to work on the following:
- Bill C-20, the Public Complaints and Review Commission Act - which has been adopted and will finally create an independent watchdog for CBSA
- Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 and the very problematic Artificial Intelligence and Data Act
- Bill C-63: The concerning Online Harms Act
- Bill C-70: The new and highly controversial Foreign Interference law
- Bill C-353: The Foreign Hostage Takers Accountability Act
- Palestine and the right to dissent
- Canada’s terrorist entities list
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Monitoring the implementation and review of the authorization regime for international assistance to vulnerable populations in areas controlled by “terrorist” groups
- Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
- Repatriation of all Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
- Justice for Dr Hassan Diab
- Mohamed Harkat & Security certificates
- Work with the international Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- The UN Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) Canada assessment
- The UN Cybersecurity Treaty & the EU AI Convention
What we have planned for 2025!
The coming year will present many challenges, old and new. Much of our successes from this past year will continue to need follow-up, as we track the establishment of the new CBSA review body, and push back against new foreign interference laws and attempts to silence protest. There are also the challenges we will face with the incoming US government, which is already playing out its promises to increase the securitization of the US-Canada border with more police, drones and facial recognition surveillance. This will place the rights of all travellers, but especially asylum seekers searching for protection and better living conditions, at risk.
We’ll also have our own election in Canada this year, and ICLMG will be working to both make sure the public is aware of the parties’ track records on civil liberties and national security, as well as to secure commitments to protect our rights from candidates and the new government once it is in office.
We will continue our work on these issues and much more in the next year:
- Pressuring lawmakers and officials to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security as well as opposing the discourse of “countering terrorism” to repress dissent, such as protests in support of Palestinian rights and lives
- Co-creating a mechanism to monitor how the new Countering Foreign Interference law is used, as well as continue pushing back against xenophobic fear-mongering
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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, including proposed exemptions for national security agencies
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Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
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Fighting for Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada’s extradition law
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Monitoring the implementation of the authorization regime for organizations that provide international assistance to vulnerable populations in areas controlled by “terrorist” groups
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Pushing back on 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 and complaint body
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The return of the rest of the Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
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The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities
- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
- Advocating for the repeal of the terrorist entities list, the Canadian No Fly List, and for putting a stop to the use of the US No Fly List by air carriers in Canada
- Keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest
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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. | |
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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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