Canada Overlooks Spain's Torture

Canadian authorities are so obsessed with Spain's demand to extradite a Basque activist that they are willing to overlook the fact that the evidence provided in the case was extracted under torture according to this article published at The Record:

Interview tactics questioned at deportation hearing

Jonathan Montpetit

Canadian immigration officials are being accused of resorting to evidence gathered under torture to try to deport a suspected Basque terrorist.

Ivan Apaolaza Sancho claims that Ottawa's case against him relies partly on information gleaned from an interrogation where Spanish police were accused of roughing up a suspect.

"She made some declarations to the police and after this woman said she was tortured,'' Sancho said in an interview from a Montreal detention centre. "But the Canadian government didn't show it like that.''

Sancho was arrested by the RCMP last summer on an immigration warrant. Ottawa is seeking to deport him to Spain, where he is thought to be linked to the violent Basque separatist group ETA.

Government immigration lawyers are basing their case on a Spanish arrest warrant that ties Sancho to a series of car bombings in Spain between 1999 and 2000.

According to Sancho's legal team, that warrant contains statements made by Ana Belen Egues Gurruchaga, who was arrested by Spanish police in November 2001 following a Madrid car bombing. She was detained under Spanish anti-terror laws that allow suspects to be held incommunicado for up to five days.

Sancho's lawyer, William Sloan, said Gurruchaga filed a criminal complaint with a Spanish court not long after she was released alleging she was tortured.

"The facts point to these declarations having been obtained by torture,'' he said. "They match word for word the warrants that Canada is using as evidence.''

Calls to Canadian immigration officials were not returned.

Sloan plans to call a French jurist to testify during Sancho's deportation hearing that Spanish justice officials often resort to aggressive interview tactics.

He charged there is scant evidence to support Ottawa's deportation order.

The government's case rests largely on a fingerprint of Sancho's that was allegedly found alongside explosives in a Spanish apartment.

The government has also produced intelligence reports that link Sancho to ETA from as early as 1991.

Sancho has acknowledged using at least two different names since he arrived in Canada. He also told an earlier deportation hearing that he initially roomed with Victor Tejedor Bilbao, who is also accused of ties with ETA.

"I was scared they were going to send me back to Spain and arrest me there and torture me,'' he said, explaining the use of an alias.

After several years of relative calm, ETA declared a formal end to its cease-fire in June 2007, around the time Sancho was arrested. Since then, ETA has carried out more than a dozen bombings and assassinated two police officers.

The hearing resumes tomorrow.

Canada is showing an unusual disrespect towards human rights. Everything and anything counts against the Basques.

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