Edney, Dennis - short clip - CanadianSupremeCourtsBraveDecision

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-	What I did was I,	0:00
	quite naively thought,	0:05
	I'd just communicate with my government	0:06
	and see how they can help me.	0:09
	So I started this pen-pal relationship	0:13
	with the Canadian government.	0:15
	And after a while,	0:18
	my writing hand became quite sore	0:19
	because the number of letters that I wrote	0:23
	and the very few responses I received,	0:26
	this was the liberal government at the time,	0:30
	became frustrating.	0:33
	Like all governments,	0:35
	and the liberal government had come into power	0:37
	saying that we're going to be transparent and open	0:42
	with its citizens.	0:45
	And so relying upon that,	0:47
	I thought they would be transparent and open.	0:48
	but every time under the Freedom of Information Act	0:51
	that I wrote a letter,	0:54
	it was denied.	0:55
	And when I pushed it further,	0:57
	I was challenged by claims of privilege	0:59
	without any sort of expansion	1:04
	on what particular privilege you're claiming.	1:06
	I recall thinking,	1:10
	what do I do?	1:14
	Cause I don't recall ever making	1:16
	a Freedom of Information application	1:18
	up until I became involved with Omar Katter.	1:19
	And so like an ordinary citizen,	1:23
	what I could do is	1:24
	believe that my government was making a decision	1:25
	in the best interest of the Canadian people,	1:28
	by telling me I just can't get that information,	1:31
	cause they know better.	1:34
	Or I could look at an amount of refusals	1:36
	with very little information about why I'm being refused.	1:40
	I look at the quality of the questions I was asking,	1:44
	which wasn't asking for national security disclosure.	1:48
	So I then chose to spend my own money	1:52
	to challenge that.	1:55
	And so I challenged for information about Omar Katter	1:57
	in the hands of the Americans	2:03
	and that challenge took five years.	2:05
	It went up to the Supreme Court of Canada.	2:09
	The Supreme Court of Canada said	2:12
	that all Canada had been doing the last month,	2:14
	the last five years and refusing to provide disclosure	2:17
	was to cover up this egregious misconduct in Guantanamo Bay.	2:20
	The Supreme Court found that the United States	2:26
	had breached the Geneva Conventions.	2:30
	The convention on the international torture	2:34
	and that Canada have been complicit in that torture.	2:38
	A brave decision by the Supreme Court.	2:42
	The only advanced court	2:44
	that challenged the U.S. administration	2:47
	on Guantanamo Bay.	2:51

Item Info

Title:

Edney, Dennis - short clip - CanadianSupremeCourtsBraveDecision

Date:

March 9, 2012

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Edney, Dennis

Role:

Detainee Attorney

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Detainee Attorney
Dennis Edney, male, age 65, has been representing Canadian citizen Omar Khadr--who was captured and brought to Guantanamo as a juvenile--for over a decade.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:58:32

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

b01d19a79ea17783add0cdb453daea30
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4474fb22
5ba8466e-9052-4b3f-8f39-f155db83977d

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4474fb22

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Edney, Dennis - short clip - CanadianSupremeCourtsBraveDecision

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