Special Resolution, Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, Dec. 8‑9, 2007

This meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada condemns the Dec. 6 extradition of Aboriginal activist John Graham to the United States as an appalling violation of his civil liberties and legal rights, and an unacceptable attack on the sovereignty of Canada and of Aboriginal peoples.

     For the past four years, John Graham and his family and supporters have courageously resisted the FBI demand that he be sent to the United States to stand trial for the brutal 1975 murder of American Indian Movement member Anna Mae Aquash. It has become increasingly obvious that the charges against John Graham are based on utterly tainted evidence, and that the FBI is engaged in a sleazy attempt to refute longstanding and well‑founded accusations that by "snitch‑jacketing" Anna Mae (spreading false rumours that she was a police agent), the Bureau itself is deeply implicated in her tragic death.

     As many legal experts and defenders of civil liberties have warned, changes to Canada's extradition laws adopted by Parliament in 1999 virtually eliminated any power by Canadian judges to reject an extradition request from the US. In effect, Canadian courts can no longer exercise this country's sovereign right to require that a minimal level of genuine evidence of guilt be presented to grant approval for such an extradition request. US prosecutors were unable to present any credible evidence linking John Graham to the murder, yet the courts in British Columbia approved the extradition request, and then rejected Graham's appeal earlier this year.

     Since then, the John Graham Defense Committee and other groups have worked constantly to urge federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to block the extradition, and a final appeal was forwarded to the Supreme Court of Canada. Tragically, that appeal was denied on Dec. 6, and within minutes, without even a chance to speak with his family, John Graham was being transported from his prison cell to the U.S. border. Through their deliberate inaction, Nicholson and his colleagues in the Harper Tory government have become accomplices in the decades‑long murderous campaign by the US state and the FBI to wipe out the American Indian Movement, just as the Liberal government of the time refused to lift a finger to block the 1976 extradition of AIM leader Leonard Peltier from Canada.

     Now that this shameful extradition has been carried out, the campaign for justice for John Graham has entered a new stage. The Communist Party of Canada demands a fair trial for John Graham, something which has been denied to Leonard Peltier, who has now been wrongly imprisoned for over thirty years. We will join with others to help expose the racist US police frame‑up against John Graham. We urge all those in the labour and democratic movements who support the Aboriginal peoples' struggles for justice, and who oppose the destruction of Canadian and Aboriginal sovereignty, to join this fight to win the freedom of John Graham and Leonard Peltier.