Leading The Charge | Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson wants former U.S. President George W. Bush charged with war crimes.
As George W. Bush’s St. Patrick’s Day visit to Alberta draws near, the federal government is facing pressure from activists and human rights lawyers to bar the former U.S. president from the country or prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity once he steps on Canadian soil.
Bush is scheduled to speak in Calgary March 17, but Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been “credibly accused” of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are “inadmissible” to Canada. ”The test isn’t whether the person’s been convicted, but whether there’s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,” says Davidson, who’s with Lawyers Against the War (LAW). “…It’s now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty.”
In February, Davidson sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other cabinet ministers asking the Canadian government to either bar Bush from Canada, prosecute him once he arrives, or have the federal attorney general consent to a private prosecution by LAW against the Texan. She hasn’t received a response, and concedes she’s fighting “an uphill battle” with “terrific challenges.” Davidson laid torture charges against Bush during his visit to Vancouver in 2004, but a judge quashed them within days.
The federal government is keeping silent on the upcoming visit. “We have no comments to offer on the visit of Mr. George W. Bush to Calgary,” said Foreign Affairs spokesperson Alain Cacchione in an e-mail. When told about Davidson’s letter, a spokesperson with the Canadian Border Services Agency said “we wouldn’t comment on something like that.” Davidson is one of many voices around the world calling for Bush’s prosecution. Earlier this year, Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, said the U.S. has a “clear obligation” to prosecute Bush and former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing torture — a violation of the UN Convention on Torture.
Calgary activists, meanwhile, are organizing a number of events for the week of Bush’s visit, culminating in a noontime rally outside the Telus Convention Centre during Bush’s speech. “We want to give him the welcome that he deserves — which is we want him to go back to the States, or we want him arrested,” says organizer Collette Lemieux.
Lemieux is hopeful that Bush will eventually be prosecuted. “Do I think that it’s going to happen very soon? No,” she says. “But I think that it’s very important that we keep the pressure up…. We have to make it clear that there’s accountability.”
Comments: 7
eddieo wrote:
I urge all Canadians of all political stripes to write to the PM, the Foreign Ministre as well as the leaders of the opposition and insist that they uphold their responsibilities as Canadians and leaders. We must arrest G.W. when he lands in Calgary, or become complicit in his highest of crimes.
on Mar 12th, 2009 at 9:37am Report Abuse
i'mpissed wrote:
I categorically state that dubya should be turned back at the border before he taints our sovereign soil with his presence. Never in all of history has a person so flagrantly defied the laws as this imbecile and for Customs and Immigration to allow him entrance to Canada shows utter and total disregard for the Canadian people. If we allow him to enter our country, are we not also showing a similar lack of courage? My direct family has been resident in Canada since before the days of Confederation (Sir John A McDonald was a close friend and employer of my great grandfather Squire Henry Muma, founder of Drumbo Ontario) and I'm certain that even in those days, a person of G W's reputation would be disallowed entry.
Let us show our strength as a free and unified nation and tell him to stay away or suffer the consequences.
on Mar 12th, 2009 at 10:23am Report Abuse
trinity01 wrote:
on Mar 12th, 2009 at 4:28pm Report Abuse
jeffryh wrote:
So Gail Davidson is perfectly correct that Bush is legally inadmissible to Canada, since he has almost certainly violated the Torture Convention, among other laws.
(Maybe that's why the US Military Commissions Act of 2007 tries to offer inside-the-US protection to anyone who ORDERED torture. Otherwise, why bother?)
It makes Canada look like a US satellite if Bush is allowed to come here.
on Mar 13th, 2009 at 1:30pm Report Abuse
OKGA wrote:
on Mar 15th, 2009 at 12:54am Report Abuse
Andrew Paul wrote:
on Mar 23rd, 2009 at 9:21am Report Abuse
alegal step wrote:
Foreign nationality was and is the prerequisite mandated to be a victim of the German Holicost or African Slave trade in America and a terrorist in any nation at war against terror.
To seek the enforcement of an Immigration Law against someone having a foreign nationality denies them a jurisdiction where a measure of justice can be obtained by foreign nationals who do not have the persumtion of innocence until convicted of a crime but apparently is deemed guilty of committing a crime regardless if convicted or not. Tell me more about this equality under the laws that foreign nationals do not have here in Canada.
And as an intellegence analyst I will tell you about a war that will never end that has no purpose other than eliviating all fear of irresponsable acts and laws having any conseqenses to the Kings of the Earth, Bush is no worse or better than Harper.
Mystery H.
on Jul 21st, 2009 at 9:44pm Report Abuse
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