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[bacasper]

NORTHERN EXPOSURE

Former police officer: 'Canada tortured me'

Congressmen ask State Department to investigate

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Posted: March 21, 2008
11:40 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
� 2008 WorldNetDaily

The U.S. State Department has been asked by members of Congress to investigate reports from a former New Jersey police officer that he was jailed on trumped-up charges and tortured in Canada in violation of international treaties that require prisoners be given access to consular services when facing prison in a foreign country.

The request comes in light of President Bush's advocacy, on which WND has reported, on behalf of a confessed murderer in Texas who is challenging his convictions and sentences on the grounds he is a Mexican national and was denied access to Mexican consular services during his case.

In that case, the Bush administration submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing to overturn the death penalty of Jose Medellin, who confessed in 1993 to participating in the rape and murder of two Houston teenagers. Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were sodomized and strangled with their shoe laces, and Medellin bragged about keeping one girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir of the crime.

In the new case, requests for an investigation have been submitted to the State Department by U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer and Rob Andrews on behalf of Scott Loper, who was delivered to the U.S. border by Canadians in 2004 after he served a four-year prison term on charges he believes were manufactured. He is represented by civil rights lawyer C. Scott Shields of Media, Pa.

He's been working ever since to have his case investigated, since his wife and small son, Eddy, who now would be 11 years old, disappeared at his arrest.

Kenneth M. Durkin, the chief of Western Hemisphere Division in the Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management at the State Department, wrote to Hoyer confirming that Canada jailed Loper without notifying the U.S., but essentially expressing an inability to pursue the case further.

"We were able to confirm his conviction and subsequent prison term for criminal harassment," the letter to Hoyer said. "Canadian Authorities did not notify the U.S. Consulate General or the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa of Mr. Loper's incarceration, and as a result we were not able to provide him with any Consular services. However, we have reminded the local authorities of the importance of consular notification when U.S. citizens are arrested."

The letter continued, "Mr. Loper questioned the reason for his incarceration and expressed his belief that Canadian law enforcement personnel accused him of criminal harassment in order to cover up their own criminal activities. We take all allegations of abuse against incarcerated Americans seriously. Consular officers from our Consulate General in Toronto spoke with Canadian police supervisors with regard to Mr. Lopez's mistreatment allegations. We will update your office with any information the consulate General obtains from Canadian officials. We have advised Mr. Loper that if he wishes to file a complaint against the Durham Regional Police, he can do so by visiting the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services website�"

more at link

At the State Department, Durkin did not return WND telephone calls, and his assistant told WND, "I cannot talk to you about this."

Few options

Shields said his client, Loper, has few options left if the State Department refuses to pursue his case, as apparently is happening. "Otherwise he'd have to go back into Canada and hire Canadian counsel and sue them there."

His client's case is a "cry out to the State Department to demand some accountability for [Canada] not notifying our government he was in custody to begin with� They've admitted they didn't notify our government and still don't want to address the issues," he said.

"Our government can file a claim through the International Court of Justice. We [as individuals] cannot," he said.

"But for reasons, not told to me, other than apparently our federal current administration perhaps doesn't want to upset the Canadian government, they're not pushing it," he said.

"I don't even know how to classify the inaction on the part of our government now," he said.

Coverup?

The first response from the Canadian government, according to documents provided WND by Loper, was to deny that he was in Canada, had been the subject of a court case, or was jailed there.

A letter shortly after Loper was returned to the United States and had started complaining about his incarceration references the denial. "We have contacted the Consulate in Toronto to gain further information regarding Mr. Loper's incarceration. They have no record of this incident," the letter from Kees Davison, then chief of Western Hemisphere Division, told Andrews, who also has sought help from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The admission later was forthcoming from Canada that the jail term for Loper, was, in fact, reality.

But Loper said there appears to be something more at stake, because of the concerted effort to hide his situation. He also said that would align with what he saw during the rest of his case.

Stumbling on crime?

Loper, who had moved to Canada so his wife at the time could be closer to her family, said the whole situation was unsettling from the beginning. He was divorced from his original Canadian wife, then married his second wife, Carolyn.

While moving into a townhome, they were welcomed by a beer-drinking crowd in the next unit who identified themselves as police officers, one of whom later warned him that a neighbor on the other side was "under surveillance" as a possible drug dealer.

Loper's experience as a New Jersey officer alerted him, and he subsequently watched officers repeatedly sneak into the next-door unit. He bought some microphones and a tape recorder and installed the mikes so they would monitor what was going on, discovering that police officers in the Durham region allegedly were busting drug dealers being identified by his neighbor, then bringing the drugs to him for sale.

Before he could take his evidence to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's federal police unit, he was busted by local police on trumped-up charges, taken to a mental health facility and detained, he said.

While he was confined, his townhome was ransacked, his tapes confiscated, and his wife and young son disappeared. He recalls a last telephone call from Carolyn. "I love you but they'll take Eddy away!" were the last words he heard her say, Loper told WND.

Released from the mental facility after a few days, he found his wife and son gone, and when he tried to find them, found himself the subject of a restraining order. He tried to express his love for his wife and son in a letter to a friend, and authorities determined that was an attempt at an "indirect communication" and he was sentenced to prison for four years.

There, officers repeatedly tried to get him to admit that he was making up the claims about the police officers' drug connections. "There was a hot water radiator. They would spray me with that to get me to recant my story, to get me to stop saying it," he said.

more at link

"Through the efforts of my childhood friend, Congressman Rob Andrews, the State Department and by civil rights lawyer, Mr. Scott Shields, it was confidentially revealed by the Canadian government that what happened to me was a 'terrible tragedy,' but if the Canadian public learned of these events, they would lose confidence in their police," Loper said.

[Gopher]

I believe it. Canadians torture me with their nonsense everyday. Why should they not begin physically torturing Americans, too...?

[TheUrbanMyth]

[mises]

Ugh. Canadians. We misuse the word "we".

[yawarakaijin]

Makes me be proud to be from Oshawa ( in Durham region ) LOL.

Geez, I knew there was a reason I left that hell hole.

[Gopher]

I just Googled "Rods of God" to put the image here, in order to scare some sense into these ruffians. But dammit if "Joo" did not appear on the first page

[doc_ido]

What, the US can dish it out but not take it?

[jlb]

[mises]

Got it. In regards to torture, two wrongs make a right. Never mind that this dude was not tortured, but pretending he was, the childish Canadian retort above would say that because somebody from his general geographic region tortured an entirely unrelated person ergo his torture is acceptable.

Does this mean then that Canada can apprehend and torture to death an Iranian journo cause Iran dished it and can take it?

Does this also mean that it would be ok for whites to be tossed in residential schools and taught the Native way of life, and raped, because, well, we dished it out...

[nautilus]

[supernick]

I'm still waiting to read where he was raped, beaten, stripped naked in front of female officers, electrocuted and attacked by dogs. Until I read something of that nature, I couldn't be concerned as some those techniques were approved to some degree by the White House.

All I can say is the guy got lucky.

As TUM pointed out, what reponsiblitiy is the U.S going to take when the U.S. deported a Canadian citizen to Syria? You don't deport a person to a third country; you deport them to where they came from.

[bacasper]

[crusher_of_heads]