Standing On Guard For Thee: Developments II

Submitted by Mentarch on Sun, 09/30/2007 - 11:25.

More on Alison Bodine, the American anti-war activist who was unlawfully and illegally arrested and detained by Canadian border agents and the RCMP. Since then, she has been in a virtual Limbo without her driver's license and U.S. passport, awaiting for her "admissibility" hearing which had been postponed to September 28, 2007.

Via Alison Bodine Speaks Out!:

Early Friday morning, September 28, 2007, Alison Bodine arrived at the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) office in downtown Vancouver for her Admissibility Hearing. Alison is a well-known social justice activist in Vancouver and a central organizer and spokesperson with Mobilization Against War & Occupation (MAWO). She was recently targeted as a political activist and arrested by the Canada Border Services Agency when trying to legally cross the border back into the United States where she is a citizen.

(...)

The fight on Sept 28th in the courtroom was brief, but it brought important advances for the Alison Bodine Defence Campaign. After a week of battling for access to more evidence, Alison's lawyer Gabriel Chand, was finally granted the right to get access to any existing initial notes written by the border guards that questioned Alison. In addition, he was finally given the full disclosure. This was an important step forward, as the CBSA prosecuting lawyer tried to argue with Chand's request, but ultimately failed to prevent the right to access this evidence. Due to the introduction of new evidence, the hearing was then adjourned until October 11, 2007.

So, finally Alison Bodine will know how exactly she "misrepresented" herself, thus warranting her initial arrest.

Unfortunately, she still remains in Limbo until her hearing resumes on October 11.

Nevertheless, this is progress - the next step will be to have all these bogus charges dropped once and for all.

Then it will be up to her to seek justice reparations for such abuse of power.

Who knows? Maybe this will awaken the Harper government to institute appropriate controls to prevent such abuse of power on the part of border agents from now on?

Ooops - I guess I was foolish to hope for reason and rationality in such matters, eh?

Oh, well ...

(Cross-posted from APOV)