My name is Ivan Apaolaza Sancho, I am a graduate in sociology and my nationality is Basque. I have been detained at the Rivières-des-Prairies detention centre in Montreal since June 29th 2007 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Spanish state (and with the help of Immigration Canada).

This is a Spanish state that during all of my deportation proceedings has presented no evidence whatsoever against me, only accusations—accusation which I deny, a state that seeks my deportation based on the principle that accusations are evidence, and on an conception of justice founded not on the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty but rather than one is guilty until innocence is proven.

In December of 2007, my lawyers filed a motion seeking the dismissal of the deportation proceedings against me in light of the total absence of evidence presented. Although the commissioner presiding over my case had initially agreed to do so, he refused to even rule on the motion after having received our arguments and those of the Minister.

If I am deported, I will be placed in the hands of the Spanish police or of the Civil Guard, both being forces with a sad record of torture, torture which has been denounced each year (including 2007) by Amnesty International, and which has been decried by the UN Special Rapporteur. For example, last week a young Basque named Igor Porto found himself in the intensive care until of the San Sebastien hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung after having passed through the hands of the Civil Guard.

The Spanish judicial system permits incommunicado detention in police custody for five days, without the right to a lawyer, to a trustworthy doctor or to communication with one’s family. The Anti-Terrorist Law that permits such detention clearly violates basic principles of international human rights law and has been denounced by the majority of parties and social movements in the Basque country.

The U.S. has its infamous PATRIOT Act, and in Spain there is the Anti-Terrorist Law and the Political Parties Law. These laws have permitted the closure of newspapers, the banning of political parties and the imprisonment of persons for the simple reason that that are Basque and pro-independence—laws which make you a member of the ETA when you don’t even know you’re a member, laws which allowed a judge to justify the closure of EGIN (the newspaper with the second largest circulation in the Basque country) by stating that “there is no lack of evidence to justice the shutdown of EGIN, all you have to do is read it”, laws which transform pro-independence Basques directly into terrorists, where people are not judged for their unlawful acts but for their ideas.

In response to this situation, the city council of my home town has passed resolutions asking Canada to grant me political asylum and to liberate me, and my neighbours in the Basque country have already gathered over 2,000 signatures on a petition with the same demands.

I will also take advantage of this opportunity to denounce the conditions that were imposed on my here in Rivières-des-Prairies. For six months, I was in the most restricted section of the prison, without the right to participate in any activities. I had only one hour a day in the courtyard, no gym, no studies, nothing. This is a regime where calling my family in the Basque country was a privilege not a right, where I was not permitted to embrace my family who had come to visit me all the way from the Basque country, and where it still takes two months for my mail to come through.

I have lived in Canada and in Quebec for almost seven years without having any problems, working as a carpenter. It’s true that I assumed another name in order to work and to live, but I did so out of fear of exactly what is happening to me now. Fully aware of what happened to Gorka Salazar Perea and Eduardo Plagaro Perez de Arrilucea, who were extradited to Spain in 2005 and who are still in prison for crimes they did not commit, I did not want to become another Basque political prisoner in Canada. That is what I am today.

All I ask is to be able to stay here, to live peacefully, without fear of reprisals from the Spanish government because I am Basque and pro-independence.