October, 22 2008, 03:44pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Colleen French, Canadian Council for Refugees, 514-277-7223 ext. 1,
514-476-3971 (cell), cfrench@ccrweb.ca;
Beth Berton-Hunter, Amnesty
International Canada: 416-363-9933 ext. 32, 416-904-7158 (cell);
Jen
Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, 212-614-6449,
jnessel@ccrjustice.org;
Nell McGarity, Glover Park Group, 202-292-6973;
Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch, 202-612-4349, 202-365-3758 (cell),
daskalj@hrw.org
Canada Urged to Offer Refugee Resettlement to Detainee at Guantanamo
Human rights groups today urged Canada to offer refugee resettlement
without delay to Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian who has been unlawfully
detained for more than six years at Guantanamo and who has strong ties
to Canada. The Anglican Diocese of Montreal has applied to resettle
Mr. Ameziane through the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program.
MONRTEAL
Human rights groups today urged Canada to offer refugee resettlement
without delay to Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian who has been unlawfully
detained for more than six years at Guantanamo and who has strong ties
to Canada. The Anglican Diocese of Montreal has applied to resettle
Mr. Ameziane through the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program.
"The refugee sponsorship of Djamel Ameziane is part of the church's
mission of justice and compassion in the world," said The Right
Reverend Barry B. Clarke, Anglican Bishop of Montreal. "Having read
what Djamel has suffered and the risk he would face if returned to
Algeria, I am convinced that sponsoring him is the right thing to do."
The sponsorship is supported by the Canadian Council for
Refugees, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the New
York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who call on the
Canadian government to process Mr. Ameziane's case on an urgent basis,
given his ongoing arbitrary detention at Guantanamo.
"Canada can and should resettle Mr. Ameziane on an urgent basis, in
order to free him from continued arbitrary imprisonment," said Janet
Dench, Executive Director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.
"Canadian law recognizes that refugees at risk of violence, torture and
arbitrary imprisonment are in urgent need of protection: this is
clearly Mr. Ameziane's case."
Mr. Ameziane was sent to Guantanamo after he was sold to the U.S. by
bounty hunters in 2001. He has been imprisoned there without charge or
a fair hearing for more than six and a half years. He has been
subjected to various forms of torture and ill-treatment during his
imprisonment, and was held in solitary confinement in a small
windowless cell for over a year. He cannot be returned to Algeria
because of a risk of serious human rights violations, based on the
stigma of having been suspected of terrorism related activities and
detained in Guantanamo.
"Amnesty International is calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay
detention camp and for lawful solutions to be found for all the
detainees," said Anne Sainte-Marie, Amnesty International. "It is
imperative that countries such as Canada be a part of the solution.
Mr. Ameziane should be immediately released from detention and provided
with protection in Canada."
Canada is the most appropriate country of resettlement for Mr. Ameziane
because he previously lived and worked in Montreal for five years. He
also has a brother in Canada.
"After seven long years of unjustified detention, we - I, his brother,
his entire family, and his friends - are impatient to have him back
with us," said Mr. Ameziane's brother. "Djamel, who is so precious to
us, has never known what violence is in his whole life. He has never
even hurt a fly. Unfortunately, bad luck put him on a path where people
sold him for a few dollars. We so dearly hope that he is freed and
finds his dignity again as a man who is very respectful of others."
Mr. Ameziane has never been alleged by the U.S. government to have engaged in any acts of terrorism or hostilities.
"Mr. Ameziane left Algeria 16 years ago in search of a safe haven and a
better life," said Pardiss Kebriaei, staff attorney at the Center for
Constitutional Rights. "In conditions at Guantanamo that would break
most of us, he remains hopeful of someday having the chance to build
that life in Canada."
BACKGROUNDER
October 2008
About Djamel Ameziane
Djamel Ameziane is an ethnic Berber from Algeria who fled his home
country 16 years ago in order to escape persecution and seek a better
life. He lived in Austria and then, from 1995, in Canada, where he
made a refugee claim which was rejected in 2000. With few options and
facing forced return to Algeria, he traveled to Afghanistan, one of the
few countries he could enter without a visa. Following the 2001
military offensive against the Taliban, as a foreigner he was an easy
target for corrupt local police who captured him while he was trying to
cross the border into Pakistan as he fled the fighting. Mr. Ameziane
was then sold to U.S. military forces for a bounty.
He was taken first to the U.S. Airbase at Kandahar, Afghanistan and
then to Guantanamo in February 2002. Nearly seven years after he was
first captured, he remains imprisoned without charge and without
judicial review of his detention to date.
Mr. Ameziane has never been alleged by the U.S. government to have
engaged in any acts of terrorism or hostilities. At no time has the
United States charged him with any crime, nor accused him of
participating in any hostile action, of possessing or using any
weapons, of participating in any military training activity or of being
a member of any alleged terrorist organization.
Detention in Guantanamo
On his arrival in Guantanamo, Mr. Ameziane was held for two and a half
months in Camp X-Ray, in a 6-feet-by-6-feet wire mesh cell. Later, Mr.
Ameziane was held in solitary confinement for over a year in a small
windowless cell in Camp 6, one of the harshest facilities in Guantanamo.
He has been subjected to brutal acts of physical violence at
Guantanamo. In one violent incident, military guards sprayed his entire
body with cayenne pepper and then hosed him down with water to simulate
the skin-burning effect of pepper spray. They then held his head back
and placed a water hose between his nose and mouth, running it for
several minutes over his face and suffocating him, repeating the
operation several times. In describing that experience he writes, "I
had the impression that my head was sinking in water. Simply thinking
of it gives me the chills."
Following that episode, guards cuffed and chained him and took him to
an interrogation room, where he was left for several hours, writhing in
pain, his clothes soaked while air conditioning blasted in the room,
and his body burning from the pepper spray.
Risk of human rights violations in Algeria
Mr. Ameziane could face incommunicado detention, torture and
ill-treatment, and other human rights violations if he were returned to
his native Algeria. As international human rights NGOs and the U.S.
Department of State itself have reported, torture and ill-treatment are
frequently used in detaining and interrogating persons suspected of
links with terrorism. Other Algerian detainees recently returned from
Guantanamo were all detained immediately upon arrival for questioning
for a period of nearly two weeks, during which they were denied access
to a lawyer and their families.
Refugees in Guantanamo
Mr. Ameziane is one of approximately 50 refugees and other persons in
need of international protection left at Guantanamo with no place to
go. They cannot return to their country of origin, because of a risk of
serious rights abuses on the basis of the stigma of having been at
Guantanamo, in addition to other factors in individual cases. For more
information, see Guantanamo's Refugees, a report of the Center for
Constitutional Rights,
https://ccrjustice.org/files/Guantanamo%20Refugees2nded.pdf
Canadian Private Sponsorship Application
The Anglican Diocese of Montreal has submitted a sponsorship
application on behalf of Djamel Ameziane under the Private Sponsorship
of Refugees Program. The governments of Canada and Quebec are required
to process this application and approve Mr. Ameziane's resettlement in
Canada if he meets the regulatory requirements, i.e. he is a refugee in
need of a durable solution and is not inadmissible to Canada (e.g. on
criminality or security grounds).
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations also defines a
category of applicants for resettlement who are in "urgent need of
protection". These are refugees whose "life, liberty or physical
safety is under immediate threat and, if not protected, the person is
likely to be
(a) killed;
(b) subjected to violence, torture, sexual assault or arbitrary imprisonment; or
(c) returned to their country of nationality or of their former habitual residence." (IRPR 138)
Mr. Ameziane has been subjected to violence and torture in
Guantanamo and continues to be subjected to arbitrary imprisonment, now
lasting nearly seven years, with no prospects of safe release unless he
is resettled to Canada.
He clearly meets the definition and should be processed according to
Citizenship and Immigration Canada's special guidelines for refugees in
urgent need of protection, including through the issuance of a
Temporary Resident Permit if necessary to ensure that his arbitrary
imprisonment is ended as soon as possible.
Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
In August 2008, Mr. Ameziane filed the first ever petition by a
Guantanamo detainee with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR). The petition addresses the torture, abuse, and other human
rights violations perpetrated against him during his six-year history
of near-incommunicado detention at the prison. Mr. Ameziane's claims
include violations of his rights to freedom from arbitrary detention;
freedom from torture and cruel and degrading treatment, including the
denial of necessary medical care, and religious humiliation and abuse;
protection of his personal reputation, and private and family life; as
well as the right to judicial remedy for violations of his rights. The
petition additionally asks the IACHR to instruct the United States not
to return Mr. Ameziane to Algeria.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for
Justice and International Law filed the petition on Mr. Ameziane's
behalf. On October 28 in Washington D.C., the IACHR will hear
precautionary measures issued in his case. The full text of the
petition is available at https://tinyurl.com/5p3y6u.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
(212) 614-6464LATEST NEWS
At Least 95 Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks Including Massacres at Beach Café, Aid Points
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," said one eyewitness to a strike on the popular al-Baqa Café.
Jun 30, 2025
Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
Medical sources said at least 33 civilians were killed and nearly 50 others wounded in the massacre, including footballer Mustafa Abu Amira, photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab—who survived an earlier Israeli airstrike and is reportedly the 227th journalists killed by Israel since October 2023—and prominent artist Frans Al-Salmi, whose final painting depicting a young Palestinian woman killed by Israeli forces resembles photographs of its slain creator posted on social media after her killing.
Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
"I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned," he said. "It was a scene that made your skin crawl."
Witnesses and officials said Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on Palestinians seeking food and other humanitarian aid from a U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution point in southern Gaza, killing 15 people amid near-daily massacres of aid-seekers.
"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Cannot Be Silent': Tlaib Leads 19 US Lawmakers Demanding Israel Stop Starving Gaza
"This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help."
Jun 30, 2025
As the death toll from Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians continues to rise amid the ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege of the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led 18 congressional colleagues in a letter demanding that the Trump administration push for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the Israeli blockade, and a resumption of humanitarian aid into the embattled coastal enclave.
"We are outraged at the weaponization of humanitarian aid and escalating use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—and the other lawmakers wrote in their letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "For over three months, Israeli authorities have blocked nearly all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, fueling mass starvation and suffering among over 2 million people. This follows over 600 days of bombardment, destruction, and forced displacement, and nearly two decades of siege."
"According to experts, 100% of the population is now at risk of famine, and nearly half a million civilians, most of them children, are facing 'catastrophic' conditions of 'starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels,'" the legislators noted. "These actions are a direct violation of both U.S. and international humanitarian law, with devastating human consequences."
Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
Meanwhile, nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 others have been injured as Israeli occupation forces carry out near-daily massacres of desperate people seeking food and other humanitarian aid at or near distribution sites run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israel Defense Forces officers and troops have said that they were ordered to shoot and shell aid-seeking Gazans, even when they posed no threat.
"This is not aid," the lawmakers' letter argues. "UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has warned that, under the GHF, 'aid distribution has become a death trap.' We cannot allow this to continue."
"We strongly oppose any efforts to dismantle the existing U.N.-led humanitarian coordination system in Gaza, which is ready to resume operations immediately once the blockade is lifted," the legislators wrote. "Replacing this system with the GHF further restricts lifesaving aid and undermines the work of long-standing, trusted humanitarian organizations. The result of this policy will be continued starvation and famine."
"We cannot be silent. This current blockade is starving Palestinian civilians in violation of international law, and the militarization of food will not help," the lawmakers added. "We demand an immediate end to the blockade, an immediate resumption of unfettered humanitarian aid entry into Gaza, the restoration of U.S. funding to UNRWA, and an immediate and lasting cease-fire. Any other path forward is a path toward greater hunger, famine, and death."
Since launching the retaliatory annihilation of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 Palestinians and wounded more than 133,600 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which also says over 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Upward of 2 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated a call for a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining 22 living Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas.
In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular