And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: "LPDC Canada" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Full Disclosure of the truth in Canadian Peltier case Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 10:37:59 -0400 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 For Immediate release…. May 14, 1999 LEONARD PELTIER DEFENSE COMMITTEE CANADA McLellan's remarks hint at human rights setback Full and complete disclosure of the truth of the past 23 years In the Canadian Peltier case is called for "Nothing less than the truth with full and complete disclosure of all evidence withheld for the past twenty three years pertaining to the Leonard Peltier case in Canada will be accepted," stated Frank Dreaver of the LPDC. "Are we to believe that after all these years of world attention with many independent examinations of the hard won evidence by human rights, government and legal experts, that the Canadian minister of justice would now dismiss this as completely irrelevant?" Recent remarks made by justice minister Anne McLellan suggesting there is no evidence of fraud in Leonard Peltier's extradition in 1976 were met with reactions of outrage and disbelief. Her remarks to the press on May 5th concluded there is no evidence any one lied in the extradition hearings and that the extradition was justified on the basis of other evidence aside from key affidavits which the minister did not point out have long since been discredited. Not surprisingly, McLellan also stated she has just received permission from the United States government to release the findings of her department's own review authorized by her predecessor Allan Rock following years of public appeals including the intervention by 55 MPs in Peltier's U.S. court proceedings and the urgent recommendation of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The minister further stated she would release the results of the internal review within upcoming weeks. Her announcement was made on the same day a historic vote took place at Canada's largest labour convention amongst two thousand delegates of the Canadian Labour Congress, representing 2.5 million unionized workers. They unanimously ratified an emergency resolution committing themselves to exerting political pressure for the Canadian government to seek ways to rectify the injustice including filing its official recommendation for Peltier's unconditional release. "The fact that Canada has been given permission by the United States to close the review is in itself an outrage," said Frank Dreaver, LPDC Canada's founder and international spokesperson. "This suggests what we have always known, that the American government is controlling the procedure, timing and outcome of this issue within the jurisdiction of another country," he continued. "It is exactly the kind of international intrusion of Canada's affairs and sovereignty that continues to outrage Canadian peoples. From the beginning we have always demanded that any review should be conducted independently of the justice department to ensure a fair evaluation," said Dreaver. -2- The minister's comments causes grave concern that the Canadian government will not allow a proper assessment of all evidence that proves the deliberate fraud of the extradition treaty and that all evidence not just the coerced Myrtle Poor Bear affidavits but the other evidence the minister is referring to could never have amounted to legitimate grounds for extradition. The day after her announcement, MP Jack Ramsey, the Reform Party's justice critic questioned McLellan in Parliament as to what other evidence the justice department relied upon in Peltier's extradition. "I cannot tell the House the nature of that additional evidence," McLellan responded. "The contents of that entire review will be released by me within coming weeks. At that time everybody will be able to see the basis on which Mr. Peltier was extradited from Canada." If this is the case then disclosure of Warren Allmand's report is extremely critical as a key release of all contents of the review, said Dreaver, who explained that Allmand studied the files and submitted recommendations in his report to former justice minister Rock at Mr. Rock's request. Rock was to have concluded the review with Allmand's recommendations in hand prior to the federal election in June 1997. Mr. Allmand, a former Liberal Member of Parliament and Solicitor General of Canada during Peltier's extradition stated that once the Poor Bear affidavits were found fraudulent; there were absolutely no grounds for extradition. All evidence falsified or insufficient The minister's remarks are "very troubling," responded Osgoode Hall law professor Dianne Martin, lead counsel on LPDC Canada's team who compiled all critical documentation from Canada-U.S. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) provisions which the committee donated in January to law libraries across Canada. The document is today a permanent record with the U.N. human rights commission forming the basis of an intervention with resolutions submitted by Dreaver at U.N. hearings in 1995. "It is as if the review by Warren Allmand and the overwhelming evidence of significant irregularities in the extradition did not exist, "said Prof. Martin. "An honest and objective review of this record reveals those irregularities. Equally ridiculous is the claim that the extradition was not based on the admittedly false Poor Bear affidavits. They were the case for extradition and they were false. In view of the serious irregularities in the subsequent trial," she continued, "Canada cannot say that our hands are clean in this terrible wrongful conviction. We permitted an innocent man to be extradited and then wrongly convicted and we are apparently unwilling to admit this simple but dreadful truth. I am ashamed and disappointed by this response." McLellan's remark that the other evidence supports Peltier's return to the United States is contradicted by the advice of Canada's own justice department attorney 24 years ago. Paul William Halprin, who represented the U.S. government during the extradition hearings, quickly considered the other evidence as totally inadequate. He had advised U.S. justice officials and the F.B.I. shortly after Peltier's arrest that there was not enough evidence to allow extradition for the reservation murders and asked for more. Weeks later according to F.B.I. teletypes, Halprin visited the bureau's offices in South Dakota and assisted the F.B.I. in their making of the Poor Bear affidavits. -3- The other evidence McLellan could only be referring to; and considered to have been not good enough by Halprin, simply places Peltier along with dozens of peoples at the scene of the shootout. He was seen hours after the shooting began with a gun along with many others who had been firing in self-defense and that his fingerprint was found on the outside of a paper bag allegedly containing one of the agents' handguns five months after the shooting. This IS hardly ground for proving he committed the deliberate and intentional murder of the F.B.I. agents. The two affidavits that were eventually produced stating that Peltier murdered the two agents had been coerced from Myrtle Poor Bear, an alleged eyewitness. She recanted the affidavits shortly after they were produced to the extradition court. Prosecutors also admitted that poor bear had not even been on the pine ridge reservation and did not know Peltier. On June 18, 1976 Justice Schultz, the Canadian extradition judge ordered the extradition on the basis of the Poor Bear affidavits. But he was not aware of a third conflicting affidavit which surfaced in the trial of Peltier's two co-defendants in July 1976 and who were acquitted of the murder charges on grounds of self-defense. This affidavit stated Poor Bear was not present on Pine Ridge reservation on the day of the shootout and therefore could not have witnessed any of the events. With evidence of falsified and corrupted testimony, Peltier's attorneys appealed the extradition TO Canada's Federal Court of Appeal in October 1976, which then, without written reasons, refused to consider the third affidavit and ordered Peltier extradited. Political Asylum in Canada A request for political asylum for Peltier in Canada was made to Ron Basford, Justice Minister under the Liberal government of the time since under sec. 22 of the Extradition Act the minister could stop Peltier's extradition if he believed the offences were politically motivated. However, Basford chose not to consider the new evidence suggesting bad faith on the part of the U.S. and was therefore able to bypass having to assess the political persecution behind the fraudulent charges. (Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chretien was finance minister at the time.) On Dec. 17, 1976 Basford officially responded that the Poor Bear affidavits was a "legal matter for the courts which have dealt with it in Canada and will undoubtedly do so in the U.S." However, in making his official response, he must have known several weeks earlier the appeals court had refused to deal with the new evidence. Since then no court, both in Canada and the U.S. has ever ruled on the matter of the falsified affidavits, although two unprecedented legal actions were still made from Canada many years later. In 1989, Canadian attorneys filed a leave to appeal the extradition on the ground of deliberate fraud with the Supreme Court of Canada. Lawyers for Canada's department of justice, once again representing the U.S. government, could not and did not deny the existence of fraud and even admitted to it during oral argument. But the courts once again without releasing any written judgement recommended any remedy would have to be taken up with the Canadian government. -4- Then in 1992 with political pressure building, 55 parliamentarians intervened in Peltier's U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing arguing the extradition fraud was part of a pattern of government misconduct and recommended that his "tainted conviction be set aside." The court ruled the argument should have been raised before (even though no court would hear it and under international ruling Peltier was prevented from raising it in trial); that it was for the Canadian government and not individual members to argue it. Even so, U.S. judges over the years have commented on the "improper tactics" of the F.B.I. and "clear abuse of the investigative process" to secure Peltier's extradition. And yet successive Ministers of Justice in Canada up until the Supreme Court presentation ruled that this was a matter for the courts to decide. This ultimately came to a stop with the re-opening of the case after 18 years under the Canadian ministerial review. Over the years, world reaction has appealed for the Canadian government and each of its Ministers of Justice to examine fairly all evidence that the court of appeal or the justice minister of the time refused to consider. The extradition proceedings could have ended there. But it didn't and Canada should exercise what the courts could not, that it has a continuing obligation to seek ways to remedy this initial failure. In so doing, it would uphold a standard of trust and integrity between countries under the extradition treaty as well as under Canada's Bill of Rights (since 1982, Charter of Rights and Freedoms). It would have also determined some responsibility for denying Peltier his fundamental right to due process, not only in Canada but also in the United States. In closing, we look forward to a full airing out of all facts and circumstances of Leonard Peltier's extradition and encourage all people to write to Anne McLellan for her good faith, integrity and courage to disclose all contents of the review. Remind her of Canada's international responsibility in ensuring a fair assessment of the extradition which is being monitored worldwide by international human rights and judicial bodies, the European Parliament and millions of peoples from around the world. We also want to remind the minister of her obligation to releasing to the peoples of Canada, the United States and worldwide the damning evidence of fraud accumulated over the years. Canadians were informed by American authorities that Peltier would receive a fair trial, when in fact evidence including the U.S. government's own admissions proves he did not. He was extradited for the first-degree murder of two F.B.I. agents; convicted of the charges and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in a trial where evidence vindicating his co-defendants was suddenly denied to him. Both judge and state were deliberately made hostile in order to gain a conviction. The final insult, the coerced testimony of Poor Bear in itself was ruled inadmissible in court because the F.B.I. deemed her testimony "unreliable" because of mental instability; the very same coerced testimony used to extradite Peltier. Years later with the release of FOIA evidence, U.S. prosecutors were forced to admit they don't know who shot the agents and have no direct evidence linking Peltier to the agents' deaths. Today, U.S. officials continue to justify his imprisonment on grounds of "aiding and abetting" even though he has never been charged or convicted of the lesser charge; nor have any of the 40 other individuals, men, women and even children who were present at the scene of the shootout. -5- Very simply, Canada's justice department and its minister have a duty to prove that the extradition request for Peltier was made in good faith and was not politically motivated. The false Poor Bear affidavits were only the beginning of evidence of Peltier's frame-up. The "pattern of outrageous government misconduct" continued in his subsequent trial, three U.S. court appeals, including America's Supreme Court, to Canada's Supreme Court; finally resulting in an appeal for executive clemency to the President of the United States and an official review of the extradition with the Government of Canada. The Canadian government has a responsibility to end this country's complicity that has contributed to Peltier's false imprisonment for over 23 years. This would include filing a request with American authorities for his unconditional release and recommendation to President Clinton to grant clemency or a new and fair trial. ___________________________________________________________________________ Please send your letters to Anne McLellan, Justice Minister of Canada, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1A OA6. Fax: (613) 943-0044 or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send copies to The Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, (same address). Fax: (613) 947-4442 or email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more information, contact Frank & Anne Dreaver of the LPDC Canada at (416) 439-1893 or email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&