Today, I was pleased to read in a story on the front page of the National Post that Dr. Wise has launched a suit against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which supported the terrorist group (Hamas) that was responsible for the attack. The notice of claim was filed in B.C. Supreme Court on Friday. It is the first case to be filed in Canada under this country's new anti-terrorism legislation. I sincerely hope Dr. Wise is successful.
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| Dr. Sherri Wise. (Photo by Terry O'Neill) |
A new arrow in the quiver
Canadian victims push for a law to allow civil suits
against terrorist groups
By TERRY O’NEILL
It’s a typical tourist snapshot. Three friends, sitting
around a table at an outdoor restaurant, pose for a photographer, their broad
smiles filling the frame. Three friends: oblivious to the fact that, as their
happy moment in Jerusalem was being captured for posterity, three Palestinian suicide
bombers were on their way to the Beth Yehuda pedestrian mall in which they were
sitting. Within an hour, all three would be injured, their lives scarred by the
memory of that afternoon nine years ago.
The blasts, which took place at 2 p.m., September 4, 1997,
killed five innocent victims as well as the bombers, and injured a total of 181
people. Sherri Wise, posing in the middle of the picture, was one of
the survivors. Today, the smile still seems to come easily to the face of the Vancouver
dentist, who was celebrating the successful end of a month’s volunteer work in
the Israeli city when the attack took place. Wise, now 36, suffered terrible
injuries—second- and third-degree burns to 40 per cent of her body, shrapnel
wounds to her foot and legs, temporary hearing impairment, and the loss most of
her hair—but she’s fully recovered now, save the scars she bears, both physical
and emotional. “I tend to be a little sad around the anniversary, but with
time, time does heal all wounds to a degree,” she says. “And the memories of it
tend to fade.”
But while memories may fade, Wise’s determination to do
something in response to the terror attack continues to grow. Wise is part of a
small but resolute group of Canadians trying to persuade the federal government
to enact legislation allowing terror survivors and the families of terror
victims to launch civil suits against foreign states or domestic groups that have
supported terrorist organizations responsible for killing or injuring
Canadians. While in opposition last year, Conservative MP Stockwell Day
introduced a private-member’s bill to allow such suits, but the bill died
before being voted on. Day is now minister of public safety. He did not respond
to several requests for an interview on the issue.
Three new private-member’s bills on the same subject are currently
before Parliament, one in the Senate and two in the House of Commons. Of the
three, the one introduced by Sen. David Tkachuk, a Conservative from
Saskatchewan, has proceeded the furthest, to second-reading debate, which took
place in late June. The two bills introduced into the House of Commons, by
Liberal MP Susan Kadis of Ontario and Tory MP Nina Grewal of B.C., have yet to
be debated.
“There’s very active lobbying on my part and on other
victims of terrorism for the proposed law to get the attention that it
deserves,” says Maureen Basnicki of Toronto, a founding member of the Canadian
Coalition Against Terror, the main group pushing for the law. Basnicki, whose
husband Ken was killed in the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001,
is passionate about the cause. “You know, our general [Rick] Hillier once said
that Canadian troops were in Afghanistan to kill scum bags,” she says. “I would
like to see the ability to sue some scum bags. And that’s my description of
them, really. I’m not offended by that at all.”
The U.S. amended its laws in 1996 and 1997 to allow such
suits in that country, but there are two impediments to similar actions in
Canada: first, the State Immunity Act protects foreign states from lawsuits;
second, legal experts say no clear procedure exists for litigants to sue
terrorists or their organizations. The bills currently before Parliament would
level those roadblocks, but it’s not known if the government will throw its
weight behind the legislation. That doesn’t mean the government is standing
still in the fight against terrorism, though. On July 7, Finance Minister Jim
Flaherty announced that Ottawa would spend $5 million over the next five years
to establish a new permanent headquarters in Toronto for the Egmont Group, the
world’s anti-money-laundering agency whose work is increasingly aimed at
fighting terrorist organizations.
Speaking at a conference in New York in January,
international defence expert Peter Leitner said there’s ample justification for
the federal government to amend its laws to support the civil suits against
terrorists. “There is something fundamentally absurd with the current legal
arrangements in Canada that allows lawsuits against Iran for selling you rotten
pistachios, but bars legal action against them for sponsoring terrorist acts
which kill Canadian citizens abroad,” he said.
Similarly, Toronto’s Alastair Gordon, president of the
Canadian Coalition for Democracies, believes the civil-suit legislation would
be of great value in the fight against terrorism. “There is no single tool
which will deal with the worldwide phenomenon of Islamist terrorism,” he says. “The
criminal justice system is one tool, the civil courts are another tool, and of
course, the armed forces are yet another tool. It is a crime of omission to
deny Canadians that second tool.” Wise, for one, hopes Parliament is quick to
give Canadians this tool. “I think that Canadian citizens need to know their
government is behind them,” she says.
Parliament resumes sitting September 18, just a week after
the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attack. To victims of terror and their families,
there could be few more apt tributes to those who died on that day than for
Parliament to pass the civil-suit legislation before year’s end.
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