Canada Drops Testimony Given by Waterboarded DetaineeThe Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.
According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country’s national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror “sleeper” operatives in Ottawa and Montreal….
Asked why the statements from Zubaydah had been dropped from the dossiers…, 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.”
It’s worth recalling that the Canadians aren’t the only ones with a problem with Zubaydah’s credibility. There’s also the FBI.
