[security-news] Canadian Secret Police Raid Activist's Home for U.S. Authorities

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Security-news <security-news at resist.ca>
A security bulletin for autonomous resistance movements
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August 19, 2002

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Security-news: Feature Article
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Canadian Secret Police Raid Activist's Home for U.S. Authorities

Political police continue harassment campaign against Animal Liberation
Front spokesperson

By David Barbarash (otter at tao.ca)
North American A.L.F. Press Office
Aug. 18, 2002

On Tuesday July 30, 9 members of the RCMP, Canada's national police
agency led by Cpl. Derrick Ross of the Integrated National Security
Enforcement Team (see sidebar article, "Insidious INSET" below),
executed a Search Warrant and raided my home and office in Courtenay,
British Columbia. The search and seizure was carried out on behalf of
law enforcement from two counties in the State of Maine, under the
auspices of the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaty.

Although no one was home at the time, and access to the house could
easily have been gained by breaking a window or picking a lock (the
latter of which they would normally do to install electronic
eavesdropping devices), the RCMP felt it somehow necessary to kick in
the door. The wood was shattered, the window was cracked, and the
doorframe and wall were damaged, all of which made the door completely
unusable. When the police completed their search at 6:30 pm, ten and a
half hours after they began, they screwed in a sheet of chipboard over
the doorway, leaving behind ransacked rooms, scattered files and
garbage, and probably a few more bugs in the walls and ceilings.

Seized from my home were both my computers, dozens of computer disks,
hundreds of videos, miscellaneous photos, files, and papers, four U.S.
postal mail bags, plus documents and files seized (and later returned)
from previous RCMP raids.

One might reasonably suspect that there was some recent ALF action of
immense and costly proportions in which I was suspected of having some
involvement to warrant such a cross-border raid, but in fact the
incidents Kennebec and Sagadahoc County Sheriffs are investigating took
place three years ago in the summer of 1999, and the damages from the
relatively minor actions total no more than $8700.