Fredericton Peace Coalition

Omar Khadr has been returned to Canada and is being held at a maximum-security prison in eastern Ontario, after spending a decade at a U.S.-run detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A U.S. soldier who fled to Canada to avoid the war in Iraq has been arrested and detained at the U.S. border after losing her deportation case.

Kimberly Rivera, who lived in Canada for five years with her husband and four children, was issued a deportation order last month and given until Sept. 20 to leave the country.

U.S. War Resister Kimberly Rivera and her four children and husband have been asked to leave Canada by September 20th.

There are 2 days of action planned for people across the country to show their support for Kim and her family.

On Friday, September 14 from 4:30 – 6:00 p.m., people will be petitioning and leafleting.

On Wednesday, September 19, people will be holding demonstrations/vigils for Kim and her family from 4:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Check out the website, http://www.resisters.ca There, you can download petitions, letters to be signed, etc., material for actions.

An alleged unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) blew up heavy equipment at the Cerrejon coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia on Sept. 4, 2012. NB Power sources its coal from Colombia. No one was injured. This is the fifth such attack on the world’s largest open-pit coal operation this year. Most of the attacks on the mine have targeted the railway that hauls coal to Puerto Bolivar, an export terminal on the Caribbean coast. Cerrejon is owned by Australian/London-based BHP Billiton, London-based Anglo American and Switzerland-based Xstrata Coal. Communities surrounding Cerrejon have been violently displaced to make way for the mine and Adolfo Montes Gonzales, a worker at Cerrejon active in his union, was murdered in 2008. Canada continues to promote Colombia as a safe and secure place to do business and through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) partly funded the rewriting of Colombia’s mining laws, which made Colombia a more attractive place to do business for Canadian mining companies.

The Gaza Strip was besieged by airstrikes from the Israeli military once again Monday morning. Conflicting reports from Israeli and Palestinians sources leave the total number killed or injured unknown.

What: Press briefing, street theatre and mic check

When: 12:30-1:00pm, Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 (12th anniversary of Mahjoub’s arrest and International Day in Support of Victims of Torture)

Where: Fredericton City Hall, corner of Queen and York.

Who: Josephine Savarese, Fredericton Peace Coalition and STU Professor of Criminology, Michel Boudreau, N.B. Federation of Labour, Alex Bailey, Fredericton & District Labour Council, Matthew Hayes, STU Professor of Sociology, and the Four Freedom Fighters Theatre Troupe.

On June 26, 2000, Mohammad Mahjoub was arrested in a Hollywood-style arrest outside his workplace. One of five Muslim men arrested under Canada’s notorious security certificate legislation, he has spent the last twelve years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement or under house arrest, yet he has never been charged.

Security certificates allow the government to indefinitely detain and deport people based on their profile. Courts have ruled that the presumption of innocence does not apply. The case against the detainees, assembled by Canada’s spy agency CSIS, is secret; it is not disclosed to detainees or their lawyers.

CSIS concedes that the bulk of the information they are using against him was obtained from sources known to use torture. Mahjoub’s phone conversations with his lawyers have been illegally tapped, evidence in his case has been destroyed or concealed by CSIS and his confidential defense files were seized by the prosecution (resulting in 11 lawyers being kicked off his case earlier this month).

On June 26th, Mahjoub and his supporters will gather to demand his immediate liberation and that of the other two men still held under security certificates. Adil Charkaoui, who spoke at public events and in university classes in Fredericton in 2009, had his security certificate struck down later that year. Charkaoui’s Fredericton trip made national media headlines when U.S. authorities ordered an Air Canada flight carrying Charkaoui to return to Fredericton. The N.B. Federation of Labour, the province’s largest labour organization, representing 40,000 workers in New Brunswick, passed a resolution against security certificates in 2009.

Supporters will demand justice, apology, reparations and citizenship for all five men and accountability for all officials responsible for injustices against these men.

For information on the Justice for Mahjoub campaign:
Website: supportmahjoub.org
Facebook: facebook.com/SupportMahjoub

Contact: info@frederictonpeace.org

Created by: Criminology.com