The following link to a website devoted to issues surrounding the policing of the G20 was provided to me by Liam McHugh Russell, who I've mentioned in this space before. He ran for the NDP against Michael Ignatieff in Etobicoke Lakeshore twice. He's currently working for the International Labour Organization in Geneva. He spent last year as a Sauvé scholar and this coming year he's doing a masters of law at McGill. In short, he's not an anarchist thug or a leftist stooge or a Marxist crank. Russell wrote an email that accompanied the link :
"I actually can't keep reading these stories. What's getting reported in the Star is certainly more substantial than what's made it into the Globe, but what's not getting reported anywhere is insane."
The piece in question is written by Sean Salvati, a paralegal licensed by the Law Society of Ontario. He claims to have been held by the police for ten hours June 23-24 due to behaviour connected to policing at the G20. It's worth a read. Here's an important highlight:
"I would like to know why I was stripped naked and forced to sit naked. I find this cruel and unusual and unnecessary. This is how I was treated for attempting to exercise my right to counsel upon detainment, just to know what was going on and the validity of my arrest. "
I'll say this: If what Salvati is alleging is broadly true, Tory stonewalling of a federal inquiry takes on a distinctly more sinister hue.