A Vancouver lawyer has written to Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley urging her not to allow Colin Powell to enter Canada.

Powell, a former U.S. Secretary of State and retired U.S. general, is scheduled to speak in Vancouver on June 12 about leadership in the 21st century.

Gail Davidson, cofounder of Lawyers Against the War, wrote in her letter to Finley that Powell is “a person credibly accused of involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave human rights abuses including torture”, which makes him inadmissible to Canada.

“Colin Powell, as a member of the Bush administration, is accused of complicity in the most serious crimes known to the global community including: indiscriminant targeting and willfull killing of civilians, targeting and destruction of infrastructures necessary to life, illegal capture, detention and treatment of civilians, torture, subjecting prisoners to murder, cruel and inhumane treatment, illegal detention and transfer,” Davidson wrote in her May 15 letter. “Many scholars and jurists have called for prosecutions.”

In an address to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, Powell claimed that Iraq possessed “mobile production facilities” that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. He also claimed that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and there were links between the government of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Davidson’s letter cited Section 35 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which states that a foreign national is inadmissible if this person has committed an act outside of Canada that is referred to in Sections four to seven of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

The section states that a person is inadmissible if he or she was a senior official in the service of a government that has engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide, a war crime or a crime against humanity.

In 2004, Davidson launched a private prosecution, laying seven torture-related criminal against U.S. President George W. Bush while he was on a state visit to Canada.

The charges against Bush were later declared a nullity by Provincial Court Judge William Kitchen.

In 2006, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld Kitchen's ruling.