CSIS, RCMP interviewed Mauritanian man at Guantanamo, feds say, denying wrongdoing

OTTAWA –

The federal government acknowledges in a new court filing that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP interviewed a Mauritanian man at a Guantanamo Bay prison in 2003.

But the government denies that Canada provided incorrect information that contributed to the detention and torture of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was held in the US military prison at sea in Cuba for 14 years.

Slahi, 52, filed a lawsuit last year seeking damages for Canada’s alleged role in his imprisonment at Guantanamo, where he says he suffered beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual assault and death threats.

In a defense statement filed in Federal Court, Canada’s attorney general says that the events that transpired in Slahi were solely the result of actions and decisions by foreign officials.

“Canada denies that it engaged in any unlawful conduct, whether under Canadian law, US law or international law, in the course of any interview with the claimant at Guantanamo Bay.”

Slahi, a Mauritanian citizen with Canadian permanent resident status, lived in Montreal in late 1999 and early 2000 when he moved from Germany.

He left Canada after the RCMP began questioning him about alleged links to Ahmed Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber who planned to attack Los Angeles airport. Slahi denies ever knowing Ressam.

Slahi’s amended statement of lawsuit, filed in January this year, says surveillance during his brief stint in Montreal pushed him to return to West Africa, prompting a lengthy pattern of arrests, interrogations and imprisonment.

The statement said he was arrested upon arrival in Senegal and questioned by US officials on the same allegations that Canadian authorities had pursued.

“After September 11, 2001, Slahi was again arrested in Mauritania at the behest of the United States,” the claim statement says. “He was kidnapped and flown against his will on a CIA-orchestrated rendition plane to Jordan, where he was interrogated and tortured for eight months, before being handed over to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay. ”.

Slahi maintains that the Canadian authorities induced him to leave the country so that he could be arrested and interrogated in countries where the rule of law and international human rights are not respected.

He also alleges that Canadian authorities contributed to his detention and torture by sharing “false and exaggerated intelligence” about him without due guarantees.

Slahi, whose story became a memoir and a best-selling Hollywood movie, was released from Guantánamo in 2016 and now lives in the Netherlands.

He claims that he was tortured based on information derived from the Canadian authorities.

“For example, his interrogators pressed him about a phone call in Montreal in which Slahi invited someone for tea and asked him to bring sugar,” the claim says. “His interrogators of him insisted that the request for ‘sugar’ was a code for ‘explosives.’ This made no sense to Slahi and was completely untrue.”

Eventually, Slahi’s statement says, the torture broke him down and he falsely confessed to a plan to blow up Toronto’s CN Tower, a building he didn’t even know about.

Slahi argues that the Canadian authorities were aware of his torture and ill-treatment prior to the confession. “Alternatively, they should have known or shown reckless disregard or willful blindness to his torture and ill-treatment,” the statement said.

In its defense, Canada denies any role in Slahi’s arrest, detention, interrogation and alleged mistreatment after the events of 9/11, whether at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.

The government says that while Canada shared information with other governments or foreign agencies, it was not false, flawed or exaggerated.

The defense statement also says that Canadian authorities did not aggressively monitor Slahi or induce him to leave Canada. However, he acknowledges that a Canadian official called Slahi’s family at one point to say that he should not return to Canada.

Canada was granted access to Slahi at Guantanamo “to conduct restricted interviews for intelligence and law enforcement purposes,” the statement added.

CSIS interviewed Slahi in February 2003, while the RCMP questioned him in May of that year, the defense says.

“Canada denies any role, including abetting, abetting, conspiring, contributing or participating, in the alleged mistreatment of the claimant at Guantanamo Bay.”


This report by The Canadian Press was first published on March 20, 2023.

Leave a Comment