Canada aims to block Chelsea Manning from entering country
A decade after Chelsea Manning revealed U.S. state secrets about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, officials in Ottawa are seeking to permanently block her from entering Canada.
A tribunal hearing to determine Ms. Manning’s admissibility – meaning, her legal ability to enter Canada – is scheduled to take place on Oct. 7.
In 2013, an American judge ordered the former U.S. Army private to spend 35 years in jail after finding her guilty of providing the WikiLeaks organization with hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. military and diplomatic documents. That sentence was later commuted by U.S. president Barack Obama.
Now, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an administrative tribunal that makes decisions about who can enter Canada, is about to revisit the case. Federal officials are preparing to argue that Ms. Manning’s past crimes render her too dangerous to be allowed entry into the country. The government’s position is that she should be blocked on grounds of serious criminality. Thousands of people are turned away at the Canadian border for similar reasons each year.
Chelsea Manning says she was denied entry to Canada over criminal record
But lawyers acting in Montreal for Ms. Manning describe her case as anything but routine. They argue in pre-hearing submissions that the government’s bid to block “one of the most well known whistleblowers in modern history” would offend Canada’s constitutional and press freedoms.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-aims-to-block-chelsea-manning-from-entering-country/