H.E. Paul Martin
Prime Minister of Canada
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2
Canada
Fax: (001613) 941 6900
Vienna, 23 January 2004
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, strongly condemns the raids on the home and office of Juliet O’Neill, a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
On 21 January, the RCMP raided O’Neill’s home and the downtown offices of the Ottawa Citizen, reportedly in search of evidence that may have been leaked by one of their own officers. IPI is informed that they confiscated the journalist’s notepads, computer files and address books. The raids stemmed from a November 2003 article, in which O’Neill reported that according to a Canadian intelligence dossier Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, had told Syrian authorities he attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1993.
Maher Arar was travelling on his Canadian passport when detained by U.S. authorities during a brief stopover in New York City in September 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was allegedly kept in solitary confinement and tortured for over ten months. Arar, who returned to Canada last October, said he made the false confession under torture and denies any terrorist links.
The search warrants used in the RCMP raid were issued under the Security of Information Act, which contains broad prohibitions against unauthorised possession or communication of sensitive government materials. The legislation, based largely on the former Official Secrets Act, was passed by Parliament shortly after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Charges against O’Neill are reportedly pending. If convicted, she could face a maximum of 14 years in prison.
IPI regards the searches of O’Neill’s home and office as a flagrant violation of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a deliberate act aimed at silencing journalists trying to shed light on the Arar case.
The ability to withhold a source of information is one of the fundamental elements of journalism. Without the guarantee of confidentiality, sources will no longer feel able to disclose matters of public interest, the media will not be able to effectively carry out their role in exposing abuses of power, and democracy will be severely undermined.
IPI therefore urges Your Excellency to ensure that the confiscated materials are returned immediately and that journalists working in Canada are able to exercise their profession without fear of being searched or otherwise intimidated for disseminating information of public interest.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
