Mohamed harkat: victim of thought police

CTV: Mohamed Harkat seeks relaxation of strict monitoring with authorities opposed Harkat, 49, was taken into custody in Ottawa in December 2002 on suspicion of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent.

Mohamed Harkat is accused of things so secret he isn't allowed to know what those things are. To be precise, it's not anything he did at all; it's what he is accused of thinking of doing. Shades of 1984?
The CTV article omits that Harkat lost his freedom on Human Rights Day. He is also seeking something even more crucial than a bit more freedom in Canada; he has been fighting deportation to probable torture for almost 15 years.

From the UN Human Rights Day web page:

• This year, Human Rights Day kicks off a year-long campaign to mark the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being -- regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

At the time of Harkat's arrest, the United States had activated its Patriot Act - which miraculously was all ready to fly on the date that the Twin Towers (plus Building No. 7, which wasn't hit by a plane) fell straight down into their own footprints.

Step right up, no waiting; haul in anyone you remotely suspect of not being a "patriot" and call it "preserving liberty". But not the alleged hijackers, of course. They're all dead; their bodies, if they existed, are buried in the rubble. All that was found at the scene was a passport; but it was all that was needed to prove we need to be very leery of Muslims.

Not to mention that it justifies the aims of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a document produced by an amazing group of highly-placed clairvoyants in September 2000,exactly one year prior to 9/11: (bolding done by me)

• Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

Talk about waddling and quacking like a duck! Is it any wonder that "conspiracy theories" abound?

Canada, of course, fell quickly into line with its own human rights loophole: The Security Certificate, and we quickly witnessed for the first time hoards of Darth Vaders on the streets of Ottawa herding peaceful anti-World Trade Organization protesters off the streets into a fenced-in park where they had only themselves to listen to, while large dogs were encouraged to nip at the heels of nice old church women who had come out to peacefully exercise what once was their human right.

I wasn't part of that protest. I had no real understanding of what the WTO was all about, and I probably still don't, though they do talk a good story. But that was the day I became a defier of the law as represented by its enforcers.

I was walking home after an exhausting day of work, and discovered that the police had blocked off all the streets that gave access to where I lived. When I asked permission to get through the line, the response was belligerent and rude. The big dog wasn't nearly as vicious as the burly officer who jerked his head and snarled, "Hurry it up." So, naturally, I walked as slowly as I could down the street, a brand new convert to the cause of freedom.

Now I'm here to tell you that I once ate a meal that Moe Harkat cooked and I survived to talk about it. I also attended many of the court sessions where government witnesses surmised through their teeth. Some of the articles I wrote back then are still more or less readable on the Wayback Machine.

Are we now actually living 1984? It's a bit encouraging that the New Yorker asked the same question while reporting an increase in the sales of George Orwell's famous book.

Our Prime Minister's beloved brother Alexandre, who has long supported Harkat as friend and filmmaker, recently wrote an appeal to the government to keep him in Canada.

If any of this inclines you also to offer help to Moe Harkat, please visit here:

• Justice for Mohamed Harkat

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