Very interesting article in the latest Newsweek about the quiet move made by CSIS, Canada's Security and Intelligence Service, to drop any evidence uncovered by use of waterboarding from being used against suspected terrorists.
Copeland said the Canadian government's decision to drop claims about Harkat and Charkaoui that came from the CIA's interrogations of Abu Zubaydah indicates "the government of Canada, or at least the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has concluded that everything that came from Abu Zubaydah was obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."
Bernard Beckhoff, a spokesman for Canada's public safety ministry, which oversees CSIS, said he could not comment on developments in either case because they are both still before the courts. But he then added, pointedly: "The CSIS director has stated publicly that torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable. CSIS does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture."
So what does this mean for the long term? It may start with Canada, but how many other countries will reject the evidence gathered in terrorism cases because of how it was gathered and, perhaps, freed because of it?
But the development was immediately seized on by human-rights advocates as proof that the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques rejected by the rest of the world will undermine counterterrorism cases in foreign courts. "This shows how the United States is shooting itself in the foot in terrorism cases," said John Sifton, the director of One World Research, a public-interest group that investigates human-rights abuses internationally.
The argument that the information was collected legally under US law doesn't hold water in international courts. But I must say I am surprised that this may come from the Harper Government in Canada who's a big supporter of Bush.